


Perdition

by RecolitusMorbus



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/M, Mentions of Rape, POV Cait, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Romance, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-11-16 23:46:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11263527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecolitusMorbus/pseuds/RecolitusMorbus
Summary: When the world is as screwed up as it is, you need someone just as screwed up as you are to weather it. Of all the men she could have been contracted to, Cait's new boss seems to be the most messed up of them all. For all of his good deeds and his terrible haggling and his strange sense of nobility, she can't stop herself from wanting to help him. The Sole Survivor. She was born and built for this world. He wasn't.





	1. New Contract

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've had a problem with how combat veterans and PTSD have been portrayed in popular media for a long time. Thus far, 'The White Donkey' by Max Uriarte has done the absolute best since Max was in the thick of some bad stuff. Thinking of how Nate is portrayed in-dialogue and what little we know of the Sino-American War, he didn't act like he'd been there. On top of working my magic and further learning my craft, I'm trying to also learn how to accurately portray people of different traumas experiencing PTSD together.
> 
> Whereas the romantic prompts for Fallout 4 were trash – especially for Cait (picklock, picklock, flirt & stutter, picklock, picklock, admiration, flirt & stutter, white knight saves the day, love) – I thought to shake things up a bit, especially in the way of tropes used in the game.
> 
> Please let me know of there's anything that seems over-the-top or outrageous in character behavior. Same thing for spelling mistakes and other little stuffing.
> 
> Anyways, thanks for taking time to read this, and I hope you'll continue enjoying the ride as I explore these things.

Cait wasn’t happy to be with him. She wasn’t supposed to be right where she was, standing at the bar in Goodneighbor waiting to put in orders for her and her new boss. She was a strung-out, battle stim-junky cage fighter who was (until recently) killing raiders with her bare hands. Somehow, her contract fell into Xander Sorbowski’s lap. Somehow. Cait still didn’t entirely understand the events that lead to this very moment. She had to retrace her steps.

Two hours ago, the woman was turning a raider woman’s face into pulp, feeling her skull break apart under that hood. She’d been high all day and was feeling the jet wearing off as her opponent dropped to the cage floor. Tommy Lonegan cheered her on, again, as she wiped the blood from her busted nose and threw her fists into the air. The raiders in the seats blew whistles and clapped and hooted at her until several raiders burst like the blood-filled party balloons they were; she remembered Tommy warning someone to take cover (not her) and the raiders spinning around with their pipe pistols out before they died. Just as Tommy was rushing into the ring to pull Cait into cover, twenty raider scum were dead or dying. And there he was:

Xander, standing underneath the harsh light of an overhead bulb, short and ugly assault rifle cradled in his arms. The barrel was still smoking.

Before Cait knew it, her contract had been handed over to this punk who’d blown away her competition and audience. Tommy said that it was for her own good, but that didn’t mean anything to her. She’d gotten thrown out. Plain and simple.

Whatever. She was Xander Sorbowski’s problem, now.

She was convenient. Xander needed a killer and she was really good at it. He’d seen as much with the way she pummeled that raider girl to death right in the ring. A man who was able to take so many lives in such a short order was capable of a lot more than he let on. That really seemed like the only reason that guy took her on: he was in the business of violence.

Her eyes traveled back to the man that sat absently at their table.

His face was long, gaunt, and dirty. There was an old scar he’d gotten that reached over his eyebrow and across the bridge of his strong nose. His brown eyes were hard and dull. His mouth looked ugly. A fresh and deep cut tried to merge the two lips together from his right nostril to the center of his chin. His hair was long but pulled back into something she’d heard called the Ronin, whatever that was. Along his strong jaw to his soft-pointed chin, a short beard full of brown and white and red fibers crept up his cheeks to hide the tanned skin beneath. Despite being such a _feckin’_ _gobshite_ , he was handsome. First handsome boss she’d had in awhile, so at least there was that going for her. She wouldn’t have to pretend to want to look at Xander’s face.

His dog, Baron—the German Shepherd—rested his head on his front paws beneath his master, ears twitching back and forth. To think he only had a dog for company up until now… No wonder he was the way he was. How long had it been since he talked to another person, let alone a woman?

“Next,” grumbled an overly cockney accented Mr. Handy. A Mr. Tender, or something. American version of the average ‘British bloke,’ or whatever. The Third Rail’s Whitechapel Charlie just seemed as stuck up as the English were back when she was still in Ireland. Not that she could remember exactly how she got to the fabled Boston.

She turned around and put in her’s and Xander’s orders and returned to the her seat.

Cait managed to sit down just as Xander muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair, “I’m such a shit.”

“Aye, ya are,” the woman groaned. God. He was one of those weird self-hating people. “The feck’re ya doin’ out ‘ere, Sorbowski?”

“Being a fucking superhero,” the man said, voice muffled as he held his face. “Can’t you see the cape?”

Ah. He had a lip about him.

“Feck yerself,” she growled back. Cait wasn’t going to be happy about the days and weeks and months to come if this sour attitude had anything to go by. She just needed to bide her time until she could leave him dead or dying on the dirt in the Commonwealth Wastes.

Xander waved her off. “You put in for our beer?”

“Aye.”

“Good. I’m taking a piss.”

She sneered. The wounds carved into her skin by Tommy Lonegan were what stung, rather than her boss declaring his intentions in the jacks. Cait wasn’t going to run off. Despite her less-than-honorable disposition, she wasn’t the type of girl who ran off on her contracts. She saw them until the very end. Sometimes. If her boss had a reason to die, she had helped facilitate that particular need. Well, actually, it was only some pride that kept her from running off into the sunset; the rest was a healthy respect for his innate ability to kill people. Cait wasn’t exactly afraid that Xander would hunt her down and kill her if she made a run for it. Cait watched Xander blow a radier woman’s head off at the shoulders as soon as they’d left Combat Zone with his assault rifle.

A real and legitimate hardchaw.

The raider woman had even surrendered before Xander’d gone inside. She wasn’t going to attack him when he came out, and the cage fighter knew it just by looking over her face. Cait watched that familiar look of uneasy fright turn into horrified betrayal as his stunted assault rifle belched out fire and lead. The raider’s face was splattered all over the rocks behind her along with the rest of her head. Yeah, the woman had been a raider shit, but that took some cold blood to trigger-down on a surrendered person.

That’s when the young woman noticed what Xander had called this assault rifle. She’d actually laughed at the name he’d edged into the wooden stock: _Mincing Words_.

She waited patiently for the beers and her boss to come. Whitechapel Charlie called her to the bar again and she brought the round of beer to their table. After a few long minutes, Xander stumbled back out of the bathroom and made his way back to his seat.

“Took long enough,” Cait mumbled around the nip of her beer. “Tryin' t'make yerself look grand?”

“Someone here has to,” Xander sighed, dropping himself in his seat.

She cocked an eyebrow, unamused. “Ya’ve got some jokes.”

“I’ve got more than you’d think.”

Xander sucked down the warm beer. Xander looked as if he still hadn’t gotten used to it, but not many people did when the aftertaste was like metal shavings and blood. Not Cait’s favorite taste in the world and neither Xander’s either, apparently.

When he placed the bottle down, he watched it. Xander’s dirty fingers turned the dark glass bottle around, eyes locked on the piss-called-brew that sloshed around inside. He did this for a long time, just watching his slowly spinning beer bottle. It had almost been ten minutes by the time Cait decided that it was getting too weird.

“So,” Cait said, dragging him out of his thoughtless gaze, “ya gonna give that bottle a'gander all night?”

Xander didn’t know how long he’d watched the bottle turn, Cait could see it in his confused look. That was really weird. “Just trying to have a moment where I don’t exist.”

Cait didn’t say anything. She felt uncomfortable. That wasn’t something a well adjusted person said, mostly because she’d thought something similar before.

The woman changed the subject with all the grace of a derailing freight train. “Iffin' I’m gonna work fer ya, I want'a know yer story.”

“You don’t need to know anything.”

“Well, Oi would like t'gauge if me new employer is a rapist in disguise.”

“I don't do that,” he spat before taking a swig of the piss-called-beer. “You don’t have to work for me, you know. I’m not a slaver. ”

“Ya'av me contract.”

Xander gave her the stink eye. His nose twitched a little as he worked to keep from sneering. “Do you want it back? Because, I’ll be perfectly honest: having an indentured servant is more uncomfortable than…”

It looked like he wanted to finish, but he didn’t. Xander just fell silent, eyes suddenly distant. She wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Who are yuh?”

“A wayward soul.”

“Stop avoidin’ th'question.”

Xander’s eyes snapped up at her. “What do you want to hear?”

“Tell me who ya are.”

“Xander Sorbowski.”

Cait’s eyebrows inched upward, her eyes widened accusingly, and she worked her mouth into a combined expression that said: And?

“I’m an ex-vault dweller.”

She looked unconvinced. Xander showed her the beaten and battered Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV attached to his wrist. It looked more like a weird, olive drab growth sprouting from his arm.

“Anyone can steal'a Pip-Boy,” she replied. Cait added, “even if they're rare as all hell.”

“Look, it’s your problem if you don’t believe me. Are you going to listen or are you going to pick apart every word I say?”

Cait raised her hands and sat back in her seat. She tucked her hands under her armpits, fixing her green eyes on the young man across the table from her.

Xander watched her for a while before his eyes lowered, eyes watching the still liquid in his bottle. “I am Staff-Sergeant Alexander Malcom Sorbowski.  I came out of Vault 111. I’m 237 years old; you can just think me as 27, I don’t play that numbers shit. Vault-Tec put me and my family on ice and since I was active duty, I was put in the Auxiliary Cryo-Tray. I’m looking for my little brother. All I remember is a bald man with a scar over his right eye looking me over for a few minutes when they thawed us. When I woke up again, I found my mom and dad dead; he was a mummy and she was a homicide victim icicle in her cryopod. I’ve been out for almost three years. I’m tired of being a good guy because it never works out. I operate how I operate and if you can’t or won’t meet my expectations, I’ll burn your contract, give you some caps, and send you on your way.”

His eyes looked up. “Am I done with story time?”

She looked more confused as to how to respond. “That’s certainly different than some stories Ah’ve 'eard.”

“That didn't answer my question.” She could feel his mood souring.

“Aye,” she nodded, her voice softer than before. “Yer done.”

Cait and Xander sat in silence for the rest of their four rounds before they left for Hotel Rexford where the two of them separated for the night. It was nice to sleep in a warm bed in the middle of a frozen Commonworth winter without worrying that some arshole was going to try and pin her to the mattress. She felt odd about their interaction and laughed to herself that for the first time in her 29 years of life, she had a boss younger than her. Still, he was older than he seemed or wanted to be. Somehow, she felt like she’d be able to fend herself against a younger adversary such as him if it ever came to that.

She felt asleep quickly.

* * *

Xander’s wail wrenched Cait out of her sleep.

Her blood pumped through her veins, eyes darting back and forth. She knew that falling asleep so easily was going to lead her to her death.

But, there was no one in her hotel room.

Cait’s boss, in the room next to hers, continued to scream unintelligibly and scrambling. He fell off of the bed with a thump and sobbed. He didn’t move from the floor. Cait could hear Baron whining and scraping at the floor near where Xander had fallen.

He didn’t stop crying until the morning.

* * *

The sun was peaking over the Boston skyline by the time Xander, Cait, and Baron met in the Rexford’s lobby. He was finishing the last of the transactions and chatting with Claire Hutchins. It gave Cait the opportunity to take in her new boss when she couldn’t in the dark the night before.

He was of average height, maybe a little taller. He was wide, though, and built of more muscle than she’d seen in most men in her time in the Commonwealth. Xander’s clothes and armor only made him that much more bulky. On his head he wore a gray knit watch cap that was wrapped around his ears and hid that pulled-back hair. His heavy, dull leather jacket was rolled up so that his Pip-Boy could fit on his wrist. He left the right-sleeve down to hang loose around his gloved wrist. His heavy-duty jeans were tucked into his socks and combat boots so that they wouldn’t get caught on anything around his ankles.

Xander wore a familiar heavy, metal chest piece (reproduced a hundred-thousand ways across the Commonwealth) that was painted a mat blue-gray that didn’t stand out at a distance; this time, the small of his back was covered in ballistic fabrics instead of an old tire. The canvas rigging he wore at their failed get-to-know-one-another drinking session peaked out at his hips, on which he attached combat bags, magazine pouches, a canteen filled with fresh water, and whatever else he could put on there. A sleeping bag hung on his back with each step, strapped across one shoulder. On his left shoulder he wore the modified armor he stripped off of a dead raider, the wire removed and a flat plate of steel fixed to the rigging. Same thing for his left boot and shin. Both knees had Army-issue knee pads. He left his right shoulder, arm, and leg free to move around.

At his right thigh bounced a pistol she’d ever seen before. It was big with a long and smooth revolving ammunition cylinder. The grip was polished wood. It screamed power. Xander hadn’t ever drawn it so she wasn’t sure just what sort of wounds it could make. And, at the small of his back, Cait could see the scabbard of a strange, curved blade. It wasn’t anything that she had ever seen; the blade curved forward. Over his free shoulder, he’d slung Mincing Words so that it wouldn’t threaten anyone in Good Neighbor, not that anyone was afraid of him. More like happy that he was around.

What kind of man was Xander to have these weird weapons? He was a man who was ready for war, it looked like. The assault rifle was common enough, but the other two…

“You’re not going out like that,” Xander said, bluntly.

Cait was taken aback. She hadn’t registered that Xander had stopped talking with Clair and had returned to her. “Loike w'at?”

The man worked his mouth, unable to really come up with a proper answer. She had a feeling she knew what he was going to try to say. Or not say, as it seemed. When the proper words failed to arise, he shifted tactics. “We’re going to need to give you something better than…”

Xander looked the woman over hard before letting out an exasperated chuckle.

“…a bra-thing if you’re going to be able to deal with the cold and the fighting. What do you like better? Protection, mobility, both? Are you even warm?””

Cait looked down the the “bra-thing” she and realized just exactly what he was talking about.

“It’s a modified carset,” she bristled. Not that she wanted to wear it. It was cold and vulnerable. Tommy had come up with the idea and since Cait had been at his whim she had to push her less-than-modest bust on the world.

“Well, we’re going up against a raider band. Pretty sure, anyway.”

The Irish woman narrowed her eyes. “Now that ye mention it, ye haven’t told me w'at th’job was.”

Xander pulled a skull bandana from his back pocket and folded it over. As he tied it around his face, he continued.

“The Boston-region Sun Company caravan officer, Constance Creed, hired us to find one of his caravans. Literally disappeared. I went right from Diamond City to the caravan’s last known location. Found a lot of .38 casings, some grenade craters, laser glassing, and a lot of foot prints. It looked like the caravan got away, but sustained some casualties. Same for the attackers. There was some blood still in the snow.

“I thought it might have been raiders, maybe even Rust Devils, but there wasn’t enough to go on. A friend of mine offered that I might get an idea at the Combat Zone. So, I show up, some of the raiders notice me, and you know the rest of that particular story. Don’t know if it was me or the Gunner’s flannel I found that they saw, first.”

The one he found. The idea was amusing. “Rayders ain’t fond’a Gunners. Th’skull bandana didn’t help, neither.”

Xander chuckled. “And, that brings us to now. With what I’ve dug up on this case already, I’ll make sure you get some better gear. ...I guess you’ll need some pay, too. Buy your own shit instead of depending on me.”

“That’d be noice,” she replied, dryly.

The man ignored her tone. “What was your contract with Lonegan? How many caps a fight?”

“Ten,” she replied.

“How about fifty-fifty cut for all our jobs and anything we find on the dead?”

She couldn’t have heard him right.

“W'at did’ya say?” she asked, raising her voice and hoping to coax him into speaking louder.

“You heard me. Fifty-fifty, everything.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Use your inside voice.”

Cait narrowed her eyes. “Fulla shite. Yer gonna kill me at some point. In th'middle of th'noight.”

“I won't. I sleep like the dead and when I’m awake, I’m not in a position to kill anyone. If you try it, though, Baron won’t be to happy.”

Baron. The dog.

One of the few dogs who hadn’t been terribly affected by the mutating effects of the wasteland radiation. The dog in question sat next to his master, fitted with a steel-plated harness that had short-cut rebar fused to it. He also had a pair of wrap-around goggles on his eyes. Baron looked genuinely happy to be with Xander, and Xander was the same. The man hadn’t given anyone the look that he gave the dog, and that dog gave it back to him. Soft. Loving. Attached. There, in the pit of her stomach, she felt something that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Longing.

She wanted to be looked at like that. Not necessarily by Xander, even if it wouldn’t be a bad thing. It’d been some time since she had a boss that looked like him. And by that she meant handsome. If she felt like fucking, she wouldn’t mind fucking him.

Cait blinked.

 _What th’feck_ , she bit at herself. _What th’_ feck _'re ye thinkin’, Cait?_

Getting close to people or things would only hurt in the end. She liked being numb.

“We’ll stop by Daisy’s Discount to get you some winter clothes, then swing by KL-E-0’s to see about getting you some armor,” Xander said, looking down to make sure that his working gloves were well-set to keep out the winter’s cold. “Confusing the enemy with your assets would only work once or twice before you’d get riddled with holes.”

“Feck yuh, Xander Sorbowski.”

The man laughed and Cait couldn’t stop herself from grinning something wry.

Her grin faded.

Xander’s laugh reminded her of the wailing she’d heard from the room next to her’s. It wasn’t the type of sound that was made from sorrow. It sounded like terror. Screaming and unintelligent terror.

She remembered nights like that, where the muddled faces of men who wanted a little too much filled her vision and filled her with so much fear that she wrenched herself out of her sleep and puked. Sometimes it wasn’t her rapists. Sometimes it was the slave bosses that beat her stupid. Sometimes it was her parents and their shocked and frightened faces as she unloaded round after round into their bodies until they died in bloody agony. That usually meant she hadn’t had enough jet since the last time she’d breathed in that beautiful stuff. Which reminded her that she needed a hit soon. Cait didn’t have those episodes often. She had the jet to thank for that.

He sounded sober, all the time. Maybe jet wasn’t his thing. Perhaps it was liquor or psycho or med-x or something. All men had their vices. Something to drown out the horrible things they had to do that lurked in the back of their minds.

But, if that was the case, then why was Xander still screaming?

* * *

Cait, Baron, and Xander marched through the snowy ruins of Old Boston, heading West toward Diamond City. There was a job caravan company that sometimes hired guns out of the wastes and he was certain they’d find a job there. And, if they didn’t, the man was sure that they’d hear some rumor or something to keep them going. Even if they didn’t find anything, they’d head somewhere else—he assured her that he had more than enough caps to keep them going for some time.

He lead the way, the assault rifle cradled in his arms.

She felt warm. Cosy in her winter jacket and green military fatigue pants she’d stuffed into her thick socks and combat boots. He’d also outfitted her with the same sort of armor: heavier, more protective metal armor on her forward-facing left arm and leg, lighter leather armor on her rear-facing right. He’d explained to her that because she fought with a double-barreled hunting shotgun, that her left side was going to be exposed to incoming fire and “statictacally” if she were to be wounded anywhere, it would be her left side. She enjoyed the lighter composite combat armor he’d chosen for her; painted black instead of that boring army drab green. He’d gotten a sling for her shotgun and a strip of combat rigging that she was able to attach her bat to her hip. Xander even got her her own sleeping bag and army canvas backpack.

To wrap it all up nicely, Xander had gotten her a thick hood that he’d personally sewn into the hem of her collar. She hadn’t seen anyone sew before, and the speed surprised her. They hadn’t spent more than an hour in Good Neighbor before her jacket was finished for her.

There was something weird about this man. No one was this generous. If their contract ended, she would probably have to give it all back. She kept her corset and pants in her backpack in preparation for that day.

They turned the corner left toward a building that they’d cleared of super mutants the day before. If there was one thing she’d taken to immediately about her new boss, it was the exact amount of violence he was able to produce in short order. Whereas most folks were helpless at the sight of the green-skinned monsters, Xander charged in with his short-barreled, vented fully-automatic assault rifle. Like he was some God damned angel of death, or something.

Something huge loomed over her, casting its shadow over her.

“‘Oly shite!” Cait yelped, whipping her double-barreled shotgun around and slamming it into her shoulder.

“Woah, woah! Hold your shit!” Xander slapped her muzzles down with a heavy hand.

She couldn’t for the life of her understand why he would do that. Because there was a Mechanist robot sitting right in front of her. In front of them.

It was huge. Built off of the machined cannibalized parts of a sentry robot, the yellow-painted thing stood almost a full head above Xander on its three legs. It bared its heavy gatling laser and block-fisted buzz saw in her face. An up-turned barrel reached for the sky from the robotic tank’s back, over its left shoulder. The right had a belt-fed rocket launcher staring right down at her, too. There, between its hulking shoulders. was the floating brain of some long-forgotten bastard staring at Cait with its one robotic eye. The glass was caged and jutted forward on hydraulic pistons that acted as a neck. The legs separated as it extended its monstrous form over the Irish woman as it it were going to open up some organic mouth and swallow her whole.

“What are you staring at?” the huge machine asked in a halting, feminine voice.

The Irish woman blinked.

“W'at?” Cait gaped.

“I apologize for my robobrain companion,” spoke a much smoother, calmer feminine voice. An aqua Assaultron stepped from around the yellow Sentry bot and waved with a hand-axe. It looked like a factory model machine—curvy and thick like an amazon sex goddess—but it was covered in extra baggage. It was then that Cait realized that the yellow behemoth in front of her was also covered in bags from hardpoints in the armor. “I am Ada. And this is Jezebel.”

Cait turned back to Xander and tried to work her mouth.

“Long story,” he replied with a shrug. He turned his eyes towards the two robots. “So, where the hell were you, two?”

Jezebel turned her floating-brain jar of a head on pistons and fixed her single lense on the man next to Cait. “My sensory suite picked up the sounds of those lumbering, green troglodytes and I despatched them.”

“My apologizes, Xander,” Ada picked up. “I attempted to stop her, but because of her powerful fusion engine, I was unable to hold her back.”

Xander sighed. “You’re following my directives too literally, again, Jez.”

“I’ve asked you to stop calling me that,” Jezebel replied, her robotic voice strangely prickling.

“W'at?” Cait hissed.

“I told her—uh, Jez, that she was to protect me and follow my directives. Robobrains have an interesting habit of taking things toward a violent conclusion. She refused to leave Sanctuary and complained that I was always going out on my own, so I built her a newer body and told her to follow. She’s still pretending she isn’t enjoying herself.”

“I’m not,” Jezebel interjected. “I am the robotic slave of a flesh man-child who demands that I hold all of his…stuff.”

“And, that’s your directive. As I recall, you asked me for a directive and I gave it to you. I also gave you the opportunity to leave before I gave it to you.”

Jezebel didn’t respond.

“Well,” Xander continued, shifting his gaze to Cait, “These are your new teammates. Neither of them are going to kill you.”

“I quite like humans,” Ada offered, happily.

“In the immortal words of a robot long forgotten, ‘Death to all humans.’”

Both Xander and Ada looked at Jezebel with a long, Cait’s boss giving the over-built robobrain with a hulking sentry bot’s body a withering look; Cait could only assume that Ada was doing the same. Jezebel shifted her fish tank’s lens between Ada and Xander, as if she were confused by what she said. As the silence stretched on, the distant pops of gunfire somewhere deeper into Boston rang through the building-crowded streets. Xander returned his gaze to the newest member of his team.

“Welcome to the team, Cait.”

“Cheers,” she replied, unconvinced.

* * *

Ada and Jezebel escorted Cait and Xander to the defensive vestibule just outside of the Gate. There, the robots were ordered to wait until they returned, provide support for static City security positions. Jezebel, as Cait was coming to understand, was displeased with anything that Xander demanded of her—with an underlying joy that Cait could neither place nor rightly confirm. After a sickeningly heartfelt goodbye from Ada (Jezebel remained silent after a string of biting words directed at Xander), Cait and Xander headed for the gaping entrance into Diamond City just as a patrol was leaving.

“‘Ey, Xander! How’s it going?”

“Fighting to live. You know, the usual. How’s Suzie?”

Cait watched the man she called boss interacting nicely with Diamond City security. Under the “cop’s” glasses and mask, it was hard to see if the the officer was actually happy to see Xander or if this was a courtesy thing. It sounded happy enough. The two of them talked a little while longer before the security man’s team leader ushered him along.

“Keep back and let the super mutants come to you guys, you hear?”

“You go it,” the team lead laughed. The four-man security detail waltzed out of the defensive outer wall just surrounding Diamond City’s front gate.

“Yer well-known,” Cait stated flatly. Her green eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Authority wasn’t her favorite thing in the world. She hated most settlement security. Well, all security. She didn’t have enough digits on her body to count the times that she had run-ins with guards wherever she’d gone. It was almost always something to do about her being trouble, or causing trouble (because they were cat-calling her), or because she didn’t want to let some sleaze ball offer her caps to sleep with her. Probably why she’d wound up at the Combat Zone with Tommy.

He never pressured her into anything but fights.

“Yeah. Kinda helped a few guys out when they got into trouble with super mutants. Trained them up with stuff from before the war.”

“Loike w'at?” Cait cocked an eyebrow.

Xander stopped once he past the pillars holding up the front of the Wall, boot adding to the trailing slush. “Do you know what active duty means?”

“Not the slightest,” she replied, eyes uninterested and half-lidded.

“I was in the Army. Specifically, the 108th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion. I was trained on how to counter overwhelming charges when we were in China fighting the Sinos; they liked to use grand infantry charges and shit to try and push us back. Almost the same with the super mutants, but they’re a lot harder to put down. I try to help whenever I can.”

“Why're ya helpin’ people when yer not gettin’ anythin’ out of it?”

“What are you talking about,” he asked, face strangely cheerful. “I’m getting on Diamond City Security’s good side.”

She sneered at that.

Baron ran up the stairs into Diamond City in front of Cait and Xander.

“Why’re we even 'ere,” she almost groaned.

“Nick Valentine wanted me to stop by,” he replied, heading up the steps after his dog. Cait followed, waiting for more. As his body was eaten by light, he finished his explanation. “So did Arturo, the arms dealer. He has something I’ve been wanting him to put together for me.”

Cait didn’t have enough time to ask what he meant before she had to shield her eyes from the bright sun as it peered over the top of the Wall. She couldn’t stand it, the way it made her feel blinded; Cait had come into Diamond City enough times to know morning was the worst time of day to enter the city. But, when she came out into the stands, she found one of the biggest settlements she’d ever seen.

From wall-to-wall, wood-and-steel shacks took up as much space as they could, everything dusted with snow. Over 200 years since the bombs fell, the residence of Diamond City fought to find space for every apartment, every large house, every trailer camper they hoisted into position, every inch they could spare. It looked like the city planners had finally approved the structural integrity of the upper stands. The Grandstands were already starting to overflow with the fast construction of these small apartments. Diamond City was going to be at full capacity in a year or two if it already wasn’t. The woman wondered how much it would cost to get an apartment or a two-story residence in the upper level Grandstands. Hell, the Pavilion would be out of this world. Even in the Lower Stands.

It’d been awhile since she’d been. The city had grown some in the last few years.

At the very center, a bustling market circled a towering smokestack that allowed the underground reactor blow off steam. It wore red tarps accented with white powder at its ugly knees. Reaching from smokestack to the buildings around it, and strung up around the market, Christmas lights cluttered the air with the industrial lights that the city had put up. Hundreds of people moved around in the market working through the wares that Choice Chops and the grocers further down the alley. Others, whose jobs or lives didn’t revolve around the inner workings of Diamond City were more interested in the weapons and ammunition dealers and the clothing merchants. It looked like a churning sea of chumps and suckers that she’d be able to easily swindle.

Maybe she could teach her boss a thing or two about pickpocketing if he wanted to be a bad guy for once.

Cait chuckled to herself as the two of them walked after Baron, who had disappeared into the crowd. She could hear a girl crying out something about a paper, but it was hard to listen to over shouting people and runaway conversations melting into one another. The scent of Takahashi’s Power Noodles were hard to ignore, too. Cait was hungrier than she’d realized, especially if Takahashi’s noodles were appealing. Honestly, the Colonial Taphouse  was what really called to the Irish girl.

There was a sudden excited squeal that marked the end of the girl’s newspaper cries.

“Baron!” the girl laughed.

Grinning, Xander pushed through the crowd until they found themselves staring at the Publick Occurrences. The newspaper girl had jumped off of her soap box and had her arms around Baron’s neck, who had folded his jaw over her shoulder in the form of a nuzzling hug. Laughing as she nuzzled Baron back, the girl shouted out: “Xander, your dog attacked me! I need fifty caps in reparations!”

“How about ten when I get back? Watch Baron for me, I’ve got to see Nick. Let Piper know I’m going to be back around with some food for you guys.”

“Ok!”

Her voice disappeared in the crowd, Cait following her contractor closely.

“Who th’feck was that?” the redhead asked. There was a gross sneer on her face that she couldn’t wipe.

“Nat Wright, younger sister to the infamous Piper Wright. Good people and great informants. They let me know what’s going on in the area for whatever food I happen to bring by to them.”

She turned back around and only found a sea of cluttered faces. The Publick Occurrences sign stood high on top of the shack printing house, a nice layer of snow on the neon lights and the tin-sheet roof. Cait couldn’t imagine being that young with that much freedom. She was chained to a post when she wasn’t made to work.

* * *

Xander made a “quick” stop at Arturo Rodriguez's Commonwealth Ammunition.

Just like he’d shown walking into Diamond City, he knew the man, too. They laughed and chatted lightheartedly about things Cait didn’t know or care about. The two of them were just a pair of buddies, and that knowledge washed Cait in a dual-feeling of annoyance and disgust.

Having friends was a liability. Xander was a liability.

After they finished catching up, Xander finally got down to business. Arturo handed Cait’s boss a green US Army weapons case, for which Xander handed over almost two-thousand caps—it was more caps than she had ever seen in one place with her own eyes. He didn’t even look inside, which piqued Cait’s interest in a big way. Not knowing the case’s contents made her annoyed for some reason. She had always known she was impatient. Even worse, Xander gave the box (now swaddled in a duffle bag) to Cait to carry for him. She was already carrying a baseball bat and a 12ga shotgun. What the fuck was this she was carrying now? It was heavy as fuck.

Still, Xander was already carrying an assault rifle, a strange and heavy revolver, and that forward-curving blade. He was carrying more firepower than she’d seen in the wastes.

Before they left, Arturo stopped Xander. The hispanic arms dealer had a present for one of his most frequent customers and closest friend.

It was a laser pistol, one Arturo called Old Faithful. It was modified, though, outfitted with an overcharged capacitor, sniper barrel, finely-tuned beam focuser, and a marksman pistol grip. It was like the laser gun-version of a Old West revolver. It came with enough fully-charged fusion cells to make the entire thing worth it. Despite the gift, Cait’s boss took the weapon tentatively; she could see the glee in his eyes. When Xander had it secured, it sat nicely over his left hip and angled so he could kneel if need be. It was also an easy drawing position.

Xander got all the more dangerous.

Once they left, after a sickeningly heartfelt goodbye, Cait and Xander waded through the insufferable crowds to reach for the only synth allowed in the city: Nick Valentine.


	2. Terms of Employ

There was a haze that dimmed the lights shining from the ceiling. At the desk in front of the door sat a beautiful young woman. Valentine’s receptionist looked younger than Xander, which definitely placed her younger than Cait. Perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four. She had a wonderful figure with full breasts like Cait’s and flaring hips. Her denim vest and pink floral skirt did nicely to accentuate her the grace she naturally possessed. The Irish woman particularly enjoyed the look of the receptionists’ strong jaw and narrow chin, pouty lips, and pretty nose. Maybe she’d been living with those rough, disgusting men and women for so long that she’d developed their kind of hungry admiration for women of her shape and form. She wasn’t about to take what she wanted, though.

Cait bit her lip, embarrassed with herself.

First Xander, now this random woman. It must have been some time since she’d laid with someone normal.

“Welcome to… Alex!” The woman’s eyes lit up at the sight of him and she stood. She all but ran around her desk and wrapped her arms around the man’s wide shoulders, made only wider by his wasteland survival kit. “Where the hell have you been!”

“It’s only been two weeks,” the man chuckled.

Cait felt something unfamiliar. Her embarrassment turned to a bad mood that was made worse by this girl.

“You could have stopped by,” she said, stepping away and placing her hands on her hips. Her mouth unable to decide on a frown or a elated grin. She turned her hazel eyes on Cait and the smile waned slightly. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Cait, my…” Xander turned and looked at her. “My newest employee. Cait, this is Ellie Perkins. She runs the desk and takes down requests for Nick while he’s out.”

“Joining the Misfits, then?” Ellie asked, her smile returning.

The Irish woman turned a crooked eyebrow toward her boss. “W'at?”

Xander looked back at Cait. His voice sounded embarrassed. “A friend of mine and I began a mercenary company together. Called us the Commonwealth Misfits, or the Misfits for short. Technically, you’re apart of that mercenary, now.”

“Aye? An' where’s yer frien’, nigh?” Cait asked, voice doubtful.

“He went back home, down to DC. His kid was sick for a long time, so once we made enough money for him to head home he left with one of the Sun Company caravans.” There was a sad look on his face. “He took a lot of mercs with him, people who wanted to get away from the Institute. They’re going to set up a regional office in the Capital Wasteland. Those who wanted to work with him but didn’t want to leave the Commonwealth decided that they might want to move onto something else.”

Cait suddenly worried for her future. It fueled her souring mood. “Are ya a’shite businessman, ‘re somethin’?”

“You can say that,” Xander replied, eyes focusing and unabashedly showing his own disdain for her tone. “My partner might have kept me in line with the actual mercenary act, but you can say I’m a bleeding heart.”

“W'at does that mean?”

“I operate with a sliding scale.”

The woman blinked. “W'at does _that_ mean?”

“You pay what you can and that’s it.”

“ _W'at?!_ ”

“Hey, hey! Come’on,” Ellie said, waving her hands to catch their attention. “Cait, don’t worry. He takes good care of his guys. He’d rather see his own cut go to his guys. And you, Alexander Sorbowski: Don’t get all down. MacCready’s gonna take care of those guys. And you’re still going to do good in the Commonwealth despite only being a two-person mercenary company.”

Both Xander and Cait fell silent. Her mood was extinguished for now. She could see Xander glowering at the floor out of the corner of her eye.

“Now, I assume you’re here to see Nick, right?”

“Yeah,” Xander said, lifting his gaze and changing into a smile that felt weird. Maybe fake. “He around?”

Ellie turned and made back for her desk. Her slender fingers rifled through papers on her desk, looking for something.

Cait looked passed Ellie for the first time since they walked into the Valentine Detective Agency. The shack had a short ceiling with only two working lights. The fan off to the side and behind the receptionist’s desk turned slowly, ineffectively, and only created an interesting swirl inside of the cloud of smoke. Along both walls, filing cabinets full of papers, folders, and dossiers were stuffed so full that they nearly didn’t close. On top of them and at their feet, cardboard boxes full of more files threatened to overtake the small office. There was enough space, though, could allow someone to reach a desk to the back-right of the shack, right next to a cigarette vending machine. It looked like a tree had exploded into long-kept secrets that Cait wondered were actually necessary to keep.

“He’s on a case right now,” Ellie said, returning Cait’s eyes to the lovely lass. “Didn’t want me to tell you because he didn’t want you breaking from yours to help him. He found something for you, though. To help you look for the caravan.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” the man sighed.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Ellie murmured. She made a victorious ‘hah!’ when she found an envelope. “Sorry, he’s been gone for a week; you know how the requests pile up. Here. It isn’t much, but Nick hoped it would help. Arturo found it when someone tried to sell him some weird uniforms. Kinda like the Brotherhood of Steel, but not. If that makes sense.”

Xander pulled open the paper flap and looked inside. His brow furrowed and he dumped the contents into his palm.

It was a pin silver pin, or what was left of one. There was a quarter-ring of stars and what could have been the bottom part of an L or something. Everything else had been melted away by a concentrated laser blast. Tarnished and old, it had obviously seen better days. He flipped it over and continued that bewildered look.

“That a familiar token av th’past?” Cait asked.

“No,” Xander murmured. “It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

* * *

Xander opened the door to the Publick Occurrences, Cait almost letting out a loud moan as heat washed over her. Even if the winters were long, she never got used to them. She enjoyed the two three-week period in-between summer and winter called “spring” and “autumn.” It made living easier without having to worry about freezing to death during huge snow storms or having to ensure you don’t bake from the sun or frequent radstorms in June and July.

Baron barked happily and trotted up to Xander. “Hey, buddy,” he grinned, kneeling and giving the dog a rough series of pets over the dog’s ears and pats along his ribs. The german shepherd only licked his face more with each passing second of attention.

“Xander, you’re late,” a woman shouted from across the long shack.

“When have you ever known me to be on time?” Xander asked, standing. “Piper, this is Cait. Cait, this is Piper Wright: the Diamond City Nuisance.”

“Hey,” Piper said in a warning tone. “No one’s said that since you came here. Don’t start it up again.”

Cait looked over this new woman, Piper. She was leaner and a lot younger. She couldn’t tell if the girl was even in her twenties. Piper had a heart-shaped face with a pointed chin that brought attention to her full lips. She had a cute, button nose that lead Cait to a pair of gold-green eyes that were full of light and life. Piper Wright had a lean figure whose more intimate features were hidden by a thick, red leather jacket and rough and dirty black jeans. Her bust was modest, but that never stopped Cait before. Her short, choppy hair was held back behind her ears by her flat cap. She already looked the part of a journalist, but if there was any doubt as to her profession Piper had stuck a white piece of paper with the word PRESS written on it. Another beauty in Xander’s life that gave Cait a confusing mixture of physical attraction and prodding annoyance. They were all so chipper. Happy.

Still, Cait could see the resemblance between Nat and her older sister. The girl looked like a carbon copy of her sibling, just smaller. Younger.

Xander chuckled at the journalist’s tone. “Well, how about this: I brought you guys some brahmin steaks and potatoes. I’ll cook them up as an apology.”

Piper cracked a smile. “Damnit, Blue. I just can’t stay annoyed at you.”

There was something in her eyes that Cait didn’t like. Something like affection. They were soft whenever she talked to him. Fully fixed on his words and his meaning. It was grating. It was the visual form of nails on a chalk board. Even when they talked about nothing, just frivolous conversation, she was locked onto him like some damned flea. Enamored. Cait sat away from them while Xander cooked, nursing a beer that Piper had let chill in the snow in the shack’s outside printing press. Beer always tasted better in the winter, but Piper was souring the taste with her attached and eager personality.

Once dinner had been served and eaten, and Nat had gone off to sleep in Piper’s bed upstairs, Xander decided to switch gears. Cait thanked whatever God there was that Piper was going to stop looking at him like a piece of fine art for once.

“When I was over at Nick’s, he left me something. A pin.” The man pulled fished it out of a canvas pouch on his belt. The trinket he'd gotten from Ellie. “You haven’t seen anything like this, have you?”

Piper plucked it from Xander’s fingers and looked them over. “No,” she said after a while, handing it back to Cait’s boss. “No, this isn’t familiar.”

Xander nodded. “It’s definitely from before the War. Or, at least it’s an illusion to it. The what the stars are angled, it looks like there should have been...twelve stars. Twelve stars represent the twelve Commonwealths of the US. Yadda, yadda, yadda, the twelve colonies.”

Piper and Cait chuckled. Cait was instantly soured again.

“So, it’s a pre-war organization?” Piper asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know what this bit is, though. It could be a lot of things. Saw nothing like it in the Army. Not when I was…”

He fell silent, coughed, and skipped over that. The blank look in his eyes made Cait’s eyebrows bunch and unintentionally look at Piper sideways. She looked back, actually, with the same confused and concerned expression. As if they were friends. Cait’s skin bristled.

“I didn’t see any sort of extending footprints beyond several hundred feet. There was fresh snow and the other prints had been covered over. It’s like they all just disappeared.” Xander ran a hand over his short, black hair, eyes looking at nothing in particular as he thought. “I just need to figure out where this all leads.”

“Where did Nick get it?” Piper asked, taking a sip from her own beer.

“Arturo. Someone was selling him some stuff. It was attached to a weird uniform he got that some scavenger had come across.”

“You should probably stop by Arturo’s first thing tomorrow,” Piper said. “You don’t have a place to sleep tonight, do you?”

“Nah. I was going to see if Vadim and Yefim’s room was open.”

“Hey, Blue, come’on,” Piper replied with a weird smile. “You don’t have to go anywhere. Sleep here. Both of you. We’ve got the couch, and you two have your sleeping bags. There’s plenty of room on the floor.”

There was something in her voice that Xander was missing. Or just ignoring. Cait knew what she was hoping for, and she laughed internally. Xander wasn’t going to sleep with her. If there was anything she’d learned from him over the last forty-eight hours or so, he wasn’t exactly sexual. And, there was a kid here; that alone would put Cait off.

Xander looked at Cait for a second, as if asking permission. She returned a shrug and a confused but annoyed face. “Alright, sure. We’ll stick around. You’ve got the couch, Cait. I’ll take the floor.”

And with that, the get-together was finished. Piper retreated up to her room to share her bed with Nat, and Cait got to sleep on the couch of a woman she either found extremely attractive or endlessly annoying. She couldn’t decide either. As Xander laid down on the floor close by, she felt like she won. What she won, though, alluded her.

She felt stupid. Childish. That this weird and sudden jump toward a bad mood was beneath her and that no one up until this point had ever touched a nerve like this. When she was at the Combat Zone, she got annoyed at Tommy, yeah. If he tried to stiff her out of a payment for a technicality or because the Raiders refused to pay for a short fight, she’d bite back at him and get what was owed her. She even got annoyed at the Raiders for cat calling her, telling her to do things that she would gladly to do with any other man or woman out of spite. At least then, she could beat them to death with her fists and stop that piece of shit’s personal brand of sexual harassment. But, here? With Ellie and Piper, there was an impotency to her ability to combat her bristling skin. There was the sensation that she was being threatened whenever they talked to her boss. So, when she saw Piper’s annoyed and disappointed eyes, Cait couldn’t have been happier.

She slept well that night.

* * *

In the morning, everyone went their separate ways: Natalie Wright to school, Piper Wright to a possible synth sighting in Goodneighbor, and Xander and Cait to Arturo’s weapons stall again.

The cold air bit at Cait’s lungs and steam billowed from her lips. God, she was happy Xander got her the cold weather gear. It would have been hell wearing the corset, even with the light jacket Tommy had given her; it had blood on it from a fight she’d won. She kept her hands in her pants pockets underneath her belt-webbing. She’d made especially sure that Xander’s heavy canvas bag was carried neatly between her shoulder blades so that she wouldn’t have to adjust it and freeze her hands.

“‘Ey, Xander, my man!” Arturo laughed as he set out a heavy duffle bag from the door behind his booth. “What brings you to my shop so early in the morning? Not gonna ask for a refund, eh?”

“Nah,” Cait’s boss laughed. He took out the pin and presented it to the armorer. “Actually, I wanted to ask you about this pin and the guy who sold it to you.”

Arturo stood and wiped the hands off of the front of his army jacket. “That thing's a pin, eh? Part of your little investigation?”

“Yeah.” Xander pocketed the star-arch.

“Well,” the arms dealer replied, thinking and scratching the back of his head. “The scavenger isn’t someone I’ve ever met before. Not anyone who’s been in the area, either. They were asking a lot of directions.”

“I’m looking into a missing caravan. There was a lot of .38 casings, some 5.56mm from the one documented support gunner. The rest was glassing from laser fire. There was fresh snow, so I didn’t find much else. Honestly, I was lucky to find the glassing.”

“Well… You might want to swing by Alexis Combes’ place. I didn’t have much caps left to buy a lot of the targeting components she was trying to sell so I pointed her in that direction.”

“Thanks, man. Keep warm.”

* * *

Cait eyed a rail-thin woman leaning against the handrails leading to Diamond City’s exit. She was dressed in the heaviest clothes she could find, a shivering hand gripping her cigarette for dear life. Ashes and embers fluttered down from her terrible shakes.

“Xander,” she stuttered. “You heading out 81 way?”

“I’m heading there, now, actually”

Her eyes shifted from Xander to Cait. “Who’s she?”

“Cait. New employee.”

She sneered, but not in the hostile way. She did it in the way that someone ugly and stupid tries to recognize someone. Cait could see the wheels turning in behind those dull eyes.

“Did you work for Tommy? Tommy Lonegan?”

“Yeah. W'at of it?”

She didn’t say anything in reply. Her confused sneer turned into a real one. “Make sure you get this to Alexis,” she continued, turning her eyes back to Xander. “Creed wants to make sure she’s in accordance with new Sun Company policy.”

“Can I take a look inside?” Xander joked. Cait could see the ghost of a smile at the corners of his lips that she wanted to see more of.

“Hah. You’re funny,” the woman replied without mirth. “And, do yourself a favor. Lose that one before she makes any trouble. She ain’t someone to hang around.”

“Why don’t ye mind yer own damn business, y’dull feckin’ lampost.” Cait didn’t know if it was the cold or the fact that this “woman” was telling _him_ to steer clear of her that had gotten her quills into a rustle. Either way, her bite was as cold as the frigid Commonwealth winter.

The woman sneered harder and headed deeper into the marketplace.

“Damn,” was all Xander could say.

* * *

Xander pressed the intercom button after attaching his Pip-Boy to the Vault console. There was a long beep before a voice came back.

“ _State your name and business._ ”

“Hey, it’s Xander. That guy you fucking hate.”

“ _…What’s your business?_ ”

“I’ve got a note from Constance Creed. It’s for Alexis.”

“ _Who?_ ”

“Uh… Commonwealth Regional Director for the Sun Caravan Company?”

“ _…One moment._ ”

Xander pulled away from the intercom. “These security guys aren’t the nicest. I kinda made some noise they didn’t like the first time I was around. You could say I don’t have a very big fan club, here.”

Cait rolled her eyes.

The man returned his gaze over Vault 81’s door. It wasn't like anything Cait had ever seen, but the familiarity was plain on Xander's face. It was set into the wall and suspended a story above her head. The inlaid vestibule was designed so that the operator could watch the door open, which was more of a nuisance than Cait could have imagined. The pitched ring of grinding metal set the woman's teeth on edge and felt as if it would never end. Cait made a very displeased grunt—swallowed by the grating sound—clamping her head between her fists.  Eventually, Vault 81's door was free of the hole and rolled to the left and out of sight. Cait and Xander had had to climb a yellow and blue-gray scaffold to reach the opened cog-shaped entrance just as a yellow-scaffold bridge knocked against the platform noisily. Xander, Cait, and Baron were finally inside.

The Security Chief, Chief Office Edwards (as stated on his name tape), was there to greet them. He was not happy.

“Mr. Sorbowski,” he grunted.

“Mr. Security Chief,” Xander grunted in form.

“Where’s the note?” the man grunted again.

“Right, here,” the young man said, pulling the envelope from the collar of his heavy combat armor.

The Security Chief snatched it out of his hands and looked at the thing through the overhead lights. Cait could feel the scales bristling from where she stood behind Xander. It was like the man was making sure there wasn’t a mininuke in there.

“ _Jaysus_ , w’at’s up yer arse?” Cait scoffed.

Xander turned around, eyes wide and smile wild; he liked that. Edward’s eyes snapped up, glaring red hot at the Irish girl; he did not like that. At least Cait knew that she would get along with her new employer at some level. He was still too soft, it seemed. That part was going to be unendingly annoying and ultimately dangerous. She couldn’t connect the cold and collected killer that had waltzed into the Combat Zone and this man who stood pleased by Cait’s backup comment. She would have to revisit this topic later.

“The fact that the Vault Door is open,” Edwards hissed. “That’s what’s up my ass.”

Xander chuckled and Cait pulled back, looking less than interested. Perhaps, she was even displeased. It was that authority thing, again. Chief Officer Edwards was beyond grating.

“Anyway, I’m not done with the delivery,” Xander said around his crooked smile, “Besides, I wanted to talk to—”

“No.”

“...Excuse me?” The Vault 111 dweller laughed, as if disbelieving. “You know, Overseer McNamara did say you’d help with whatever I needed. Maybe I should speak with her?”

“She’s actually detained, currently. Came down with a simple case of brain cancer. All of her security-threatening decisions have been suspended pending further review by the Security Administrator and the temporary Overseer.”

Xander watched him. “This actually would better maintain your security.”

“Ah. The Minutemen, right? No. We’re good as it is. In fact, this will most likely be your last visit to Vault 81, outsider. You can go.”

“No. This is about a band of marauding douchebags that might cut you off from the rest of the world. I need to talk to Alexis—”

“No. You don’t _need_ to do anything. In fact, what you _need_ to do is leave.” The Chief Security Officer swung a single finger around and the security officers behind him drew their 10mm pistols. Both Xander and Cait had left their weapons dangling at their sides; the redheaded woman groaned, wondering why she’d followed her boss’ lead to begin with and come in ‘non-threatening.’ This peace shit never worked. “Pilcher, would you see our... _guest_ takes their leave with the utmost haste?”

“Yes, sir,” Officer Pilcher humpfed. She was a tall woman, taller than Cait and intimidating in her riot gear armor. She’d holstered her weapon and took Xander by his arm.

“Hah. You’re such an asshole, Edwards,” Xander spat.

“Just comes with the territory,” Edwards grinned. “I’m sure you understand.”

* * *

“Now, why're yuh so fluffed,” Cait called out as they strode away from the Vault cave entrance, snow crunching under her heavy boots. She heard Vault 81’s door screech closed and lock. She was glad to be free of that place.

“Don’t worry about it,” Xander replied over his shoulder. His body bounced as he marched down the step syncline.

“It’s not yer problem,” she shouted back. “Yer not one'na those feckin’ retarded Minutemen. Th’people 'ere don’t owe you anythin’.”

Xander stopped and turned. That jovial expression from when she backed him up was gone. Here was the face she’d met the night before over drinks: glowering and filled with boiling rage. Maybe disgust. This man was jarring with his mood swings. He just watched her for a moment, his dark eyes burning.

“We’re going to swing by Oberland, talk to the Minutemen garrison commander and see if he can spare some guys for this area.” He turned back around, marching back to the main path that either lead into east Boston or west deeper into the Wastes.

“Away on!” Cait balked, having to skip down the hill to catch up with him. “Are ya a feckin’ muppet? Them mogs don’t feckin’ deserve shite! In fact, this is far more work than we should be doin’. Iffin' the sheevras aren’t gonna take care of their own problem, then ye don’t need t'be doin' nothin’.”

“Look, Cait,” Xander said, snapping back around, “if you don’t want to follow how I operate, I fucking told you what we could do for you. All you have to do is say the god damned word.”

Cait opened her mouth a moment. Then, she closed it. She didn’t know why. Something told her not to do what she knew she should and take the exit. Burn the contract between them, take the bag of caps, and go their separate ways. There was something in his face that—while livid at whatever reason set him off—Cait shouldn’t leave. It wasn’t because he was pretty, no. It wasn’t because she didn’t believe that he’d follow through on his promise, no; there was something strangely trustworthy about him and his word. Cait couldn’t understand it. She just froze. No matter how she screamed at herself to take that deal and run for the hills, she didn’t. She shut her mouth and shook her head.

“Then we’re going to Oberland,” Xander nodded.

Her contracter turned left west away from Boston and toward I-95, meeting up with his dog and two robots. Baron had already reached Ada and Jezebel at the wrenched opening into Vault 81’s external industrial area, sitting in the snow and waiting for his father’s return. Both robots had watched Xander and Cait from their distance, following their owner’s orders. Ada would have questioned naïvely at Xander’s new temperament, Jezebel quietly enjoying her master’s foul mood.

Cait watched, mind reeling and confused, until she had to trot a bit to keep up with him. Just one thing ran through her brain, just one out of everything she should have been asking herself along with it:

How had he subdued her?

* * *

The darkness of the night swallowed them whole, and the band of them settled down into a quickly-built camp. Despite having Jezebel and Ada to keep watch over them, Xander and Cait agreed to stand watches. It made them both feel a lot safer.

Cait had taken the first watch in the shallow cave the two had found out of the snow and let the man sleep longer than he should have, just so she could let him cool of and give herself time to think.

The woman couldn’t understand what it was that kept her from running.

There wasn’t anything wrong with taking the caps and leaving. She could watch herself more than anyone else could. Just because she knew that Xander would watch her back didn’t mean he’d watch it always. Eventually, he would betray her. One way or another. Sure, the idea of being alone was a little daunting, but she’d be able to watch her own back, and if she died, she’d die on her own terms. Cait wouldn’t have to go through the heartache of watching a person she’d foolishly trusted betray her.

Or die.

But, here she was, sitting and watching this man sleep soundly. He didn’t scream, he didn’t thrash, he didn’t do anything. Not like that first night of their contract. She wondered what was different.

When she woke him up for watch, she slept soundly. Much more soundly than she thought she would. Cait felt like she could actually fall asleep deeper than usual; at least if Xander tried something, she could pummel him to death with her fists. She could still wake up at the sound of a light snapping twig. It was that same strange feeling that made it impossible for her to take her contract and caps and run. That strange, unfocused feeling that told her it would be a terrible mistake if she left Xander Sorbowski and tried to fend for herself, by herself. Curious. It felt good to sleep.

While Cait slept, she didn’t see Xander staring at that strange gun. The one with with the smooth barrel guard on top, the red green lights along the faux ramming rod, the longer-than-usual ammunition cylinder, and the oddly attached wooden pistol grip.

Xander watched it closer than he should have been, hands shaking the entire time.


	3. Snows of the Oberwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this came out waaaaaay later than I thought it would. I'm sorry that I didn't really keep up with it. Didn't really expect for my health to take a deep, downward turn. I tried to look over this as best as I could before I got impatient and posted it. I can guarantee you there're going to be some mistakes in there and I'll keep a watchful eye for them in the coming days as I start on the next chapter.
> 
> With that in mind, enjoy.

It snowed heavily during the night and refused to yield even into the morning hours. There was no gust nor draft. Not even the soft caress of a faint breeze. Thick snowflakes lazily fell from the air with no destination other than down, fluttering aimlessly and without purpose. It left the air a dim haze of white and everything that reached into the distance eventually disappeared, as if the world ceased to exist beyond the white haze.

Nothing moved. It seemed that the animals had decided, collectively, to desert the Oberwood. The trees—silent and stoic—had long been stripped of their leaves by the intense nuclear winter. Their dark, somber forms were gnarled and twisted in manners that reminded Cait of the monsters in stories told by a faceless person fragmented by faulty memory.

For once in what felt like a lifetime, Cait knew she were treading through something pure and ruining it.

Trespassing on sacred ground.

Cait trailed Xander by only a few steps. His shoulders and watch cap was lightly dusted with powdered sugar snow. Even with all the gear, he was becoming a familiar figure, something she expected to see. ( _Aye, y’dumb arse. He’s yer boss_.) But, even when she berated herself like that, she knew that wasn’t exactly the meaning behind her words. He was easy to stand next to. She didn’t feel like she needed to keep looking over her shoulder whenever he was behind her. Despite what history had shown her, he seemed genuine if not recluse.

It made her self-conscious to know that she’d been mad at him when he was given the contract. If she were to be honest with herself, though, it wasn’t him she should be mad at. It was Tommy Lonegan who’d done her the wrong, who’d kicked her out the door. Not Xander. Xander had at least given her equipment that could protect her, keep her warm in the long October-to-March winters. He’d paid for them, _given_ them to her. More than whatever Tommy had done.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad working for Xander Sorbowski.

* * *

“Who goes there!” a shape shouted from Oberland Station’s parapet. It stood above a dark wall more than twice as tall as Jezebel.

“Xander! Xander Sorbowski!” Cait’s companion shouted back. “That you Carmen?”

“Yeah! Holy shit! It’s been, what, two months? Get your ass to the main gate!”

Xander laughed. “Sure thing. See you inside!”

Cait’s boss marched forward toward the voice and features of the settlement became clearer with every step. The two of them found a clean-cut treeline and hugged the inside of it, walking toward the river. The walls were high and well-armored. Train tracks had been ripped up and used as reinforcing bars across the faces of the barrier, while stakes had been dug into the earth at an angle to deter any large animals from climbing over the wall and into the safe place. At the top lip, razor wire deterred the smaller (like humans), more dangerous animals from doing the very same. Here and there, big signs cautioned people from approaching the wall. That

 **DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED FOR DEFENSE LINE TRESPASSERS**  
DO NOT EXIT THE TREELINE HERE

and that

 **WARNING!**  
A MINEFIELD HAS BEEN PLACED BETWEEN THE TREELINE AND THE DEFENSE WALL  
☠

More than enough reason for Cait to follow Xander’s example.

Minigun barrels reached out from covered gun towers built into the walls at regular intervals. Men and women manned them all. From what Cait could barely see, they wore uniforms that didn’t look like anything she’d seen before. As they reached the “main gate,” where the defense line had gotten all of its rails, Cait spotted a train tower had been modified into armored watch post, where Minutemen with long-barreled marksman laser-muskets cradled in their arms.

She’d heard of Oberland Station while fighting at the Combat Zone, but it had been a backwater—a good place for Raiders to get what they wanted from the women who lived there. This didn’t resemble the place that the raiders bragged about in the least. Cait realized that this was a Minuteman outpost, now. It was the fluttering grey-blue flag that was attached to a pole at the top of the watch tower that gave it away. She wondered how many raiders had died trying to take the place on false information.

The thought made her warm inside.

Several Minutemen stood guard at an repurposed rolling warehouse door, chatting with each other or with people coming into Oberland Station. Their uniforms were...not what Cait remembered. They looked like a strange mishmash of pre-war army years and what the Minutemen were the last time she saw one:

Old US Army helmets, combat chest armor, heavy Army canvas greatcoats dyed blue, and heavy combat boots. Three of them bore a new version of the common laser rifles that the Brotherhood of Steel and Gunners Company used, using the extended and bracketed barrels from the laser muskets affixed to heavily modified but standardized laser rifle frame. Just without the tape. The iconic laser musket looked to be a thing of the past, only one of the three non-armored infantry bearing it with a huge scope. Other pre-war army weapons were strapped to their persons, mostly personal sidearms that they didn’t want to part with. The Minutemen were also laden with a strange and random assortment of overstuffed bags.

Two of the six of them stood guard on either side of the steel gate in old-looking power armor colored the Commonwealth Minutemen blue. Well, actually, only one was old. The other towered over the Minutemen in one of the Brotherhood of Steel powersuits: huge, powerful, sturdy. It looked as if it could easily and quickly turn the other suit of power armor into scrap metal. The smaller, older armor was holding a long-barreled assault rifle that also had a huge drum magazine on its side. The bigger suit shouldered a missile launcher behind its right shoulder on a motorized mount while cradling a 10mm submachine gun.

When had the Minutemen gotten so intimidating?

An Asian woman rushed out into the open gate, wearing the Minuteman uniform and face peaking out of under her bucket helmet. She was older, maybe 40 and was about as tall as Cait. She looked as if she might have been in her early forties with the crows feet etched into the corner of her eyes, but she was as alive as Cait was as she started her exit into her thirties. Her uniform was bulky but it looked as if she had been trained to kill. It was in her gait, her square shoulders, the thicker-than-feminine ropes of muscle in her long neck. A woman that very much mirrored the amazon musculature that Cait had built up over the years in the Combat Zone. The woman fit the description that the raiders had laughed about.

The woman pushed through her fellow Minutemen to reach Xander, spreading out both arms as if to strangle him. With a smile.

“Carmen!” Xander laughed, pulling her into an aggressive hug. Carmen did the same.

“It’s been too long, Popsicle,” she grunted happily, doing her best to squeeze the life out of Xander’s wide frame. When Carmen let him go, she turned her eyes onto Cait and they lit up. Appreciating Cait’s assets. She couldn’t recall how many times she’d gotten eyed up by a woman, but not one so attractive at her age. “Who’s the fox?”

“Cait, my new employee. Cait, this is Carmen Nguyen: one of the two women who originally settled Oberland." He turned his focus back to Carmen, a warning edge to his tone. "And, don’t ogle the staff—it made them uncomfortable last time, and it'll make Cait uncomfortable, now. What? Delila not enough for you these days?”

“Oh, she’s more than enough. But, it’s not illegal to appreciate something that’s worth it.”

Cait didn’t know whether to grin or sneer.

“What’re you here for, kid?” Carmen asked, wrapping an arm around Xander’s shoulders as they walked them through the checkpoint. Cait eyed the new woman closely as they walked. “I need to speak with your operations officer. See if the Oberland Regulars can spare some guys around Vault 81.”

“Something up?” Carmen finally let go of Cait’s boss and there was a tension released inside of her chest that the woman hadn’t realized was there.

“Nothing big. Yours OpsOff, will have a better idea of what to do with it.”

“Well then, let’s get you to the HQ office. Hell, I’ll get you two some coffee while I’m at it.”

“Cheers,” Cait replied, less than enthused.

“So the fox speaks,” Carmen chuckled. Cait decided she didn’t like this new addition to Xander’s growing harem and sneered.

Carmen the Minuteman lead Xander and Cait into the sprawl that was Oberland Station. Xander’s awed expression betrayed his long absence from the Station. Not that Cait could blame him.

The dropping hill had hid the true size of Oberland Station. The settlement had eaten up the Beantown Brewery, which (until that moment) Cait assumed was still under raider ownership. But, the buildings that had grown within Oberland’s walls were starting to creep up on the brewery’s dominating height. A reigning feature were train cars, truck trailers, and shipping containers—all stuff they’d repurposed from the brewery. Still, it was almost as choked with people as the Diamond Market. Claustrophobia caressed Cait’s nerves as she bumped into people who either didn’t notice or who were genuinely sorry that it happened. She hadn’t been apologized to so many times in a span of ten minutes.

As they reached the Minuteman HQ building (as it was painted on the sign hanging over a snow-slushed and narrow thoroughfare, Cait saw the rest of Oberland as it slipped down the steep hill toward the brewery. It was a fortress. The thick concrete walls were reinforced with steel curtains riveted to their faces. Battlements and gun nets were built into the sides of the building and dotted the very top of the structure. Minutemen moved in and out in surprisingly large numbers, just as ordinary people did. From what it looked (and smelled like), the Beantown Brewery still operated as one, and provided the Minutemen with a depot where they could safely store their weapons, ammunition, and the people of Oberland should there be a siege.

It looked like the Minutemen were occupying the place, not sharing it. Still, the Oberland people were genuinely happy to have them.

Cait felt uneasy about all these heavily armed and armored Minutemen authoritative figures marching about. She might have stayed at the front gate if Xander hadn’t been there.

“Jesus, Oberland is massive!” Xander exclaimed as they entered the HQ office. “When did you guys finish the wall?”

“About a week ago,” Carmen replied. She kicked off the snow-and-dirty sludge from her boots in the little footwell that had been built for this very reason. “Come on in. I promised you some coffee, didn’t I? And, since you’re here, I know that Oberland Actual is going to want to chat with you.”

“What’s Kranski want with me?”

“Oh.” Carmen stopped. Her face fell. “Shit. You...you wouldn’t know, huh? The Old Man's dead. The new Actual is Rami Cortez. I don’t think you’ve met her.”

Xander’s face fell, too. His eyes dropped to the floor, wide with surprise. Almost shock. They lidded as his shoulders drooped. Xander bit his lower lip in a way that could have been...cute had it not been so laced with sadness.

 _Jaysus, ya’ skanky twat_ , she chided herself. _Ya so ‘ard up that yuh'd lare at'ta man who's lost somewan 'e knew?_

She confused herself— _again_.

“Hey,” Carmen said, interrupting that far-away look. “We’ll talk about that later, ok? I need to let the Major know that you’re here.”

Xander blinked, tired. “Yeah, thanks.”

* * *

“It’s nice to meet you, finally, General,” Cortez said, reaching over her desk for a handshake.

Finally, a woman who wasn’t ridiculously beautiful. In fact, she was a freak. One of those ghouls. She was tall, though, still sane and hairless. She looked as if she had been burned all over her body, and had opted to shave the patches of hair that had been left. Still, her uniform was well-presented despite the stains that refused to wash out. There was a heavy 10mm pistol strapped to her gold-striped trousers probably tucked into dirty combat boots. She was the most stiff and prim and proper ghoul Cait had ever seen. Not that she’d seen many outside of Goodneighbor.

Cait blinked after something caught up with her. She cocked an eyebrow. _General?_

“I’m not general anymore,” Xander replied, genuinely bashful. “If anything, I should be saluting you, Major.”

Cortez made raspy chuckle. “You’re the one who put the Minutemen back together. I don’t care if I was a Lieutenant-Colonel with the Potomac 4th Armored Cavalry, you’re not a sergeant anymore. You’ll always be the General to me.”

There was a pause. Cait felt just how uncomfortable her boss was by Cortez’s honesty. “Uh. Sergeant Nguyen said you had wanted to talk to me?”

“Ah,” Cortez graveled, remembering. “I’ve lost a few men to a pack of yaoguai that have moved into the Oberwood. Normally, I’d send out more to take them out, but raider activity to the north has taken up a lot of our attention and resources. The yaoguai’ve kept to their new grounds and I haven’t heard of any other attacks in the last week, but when the kills get scarce I don't know where they’ll head.”

“That doesn’t sound like yaoguai to me,” Xander replied, eyebrows high and scrunched in surprised confusion.

“Neither I. But, that doesn't change the fact that they pose a problem to the area.”

“I'll take care of them,” Xander nodded. “I would ask if you could see about sending an extra patrol to Vault 81, if you can spare it. I’m investigating a caravan attack, but it's strange. No bodies at the attack site.”

Cortez thought about it and nodded. “I’ll send some guys over there.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Xander got the details of where the area was and how many yaoguai the should expect. Cait had tuned them off as their words became more military gibberish than words. She came back when Xander patted her on the shoulder. “Let's go. We've got some yaoguai to kill.”

“Tell me we’re gettin’ sum caps at least,” Cait huffed.

Xander blinked, as if she’d spoken another language, and looked back. _Eedjit._

“I suppose you need something as a reward. Sorry for not thinking about that ahead of time, General,” Cortez nodded. She paused to give it some thought. “Fifty caps a yaoguai.”

Cait sneered. It didn’t sound nearly enough.

“There’s your caps,” Xander said, gripping her arm with strength and looking Cait deep into her green eyes. He didn’t like what she’d done, but she wasn’t doing charity work. The Irish woman knew she’d have to act as this man’s new ‘MacCready.’ He let go of her when she looked like she wasn’t going to protest. “Now, com'on. I want to be back before sundown.”

* * *

“ _Shitshitshit_ , is it still behind us?”

“ _Just keep leggin’ it!_ ”

Cait’s boots carried her as fast as she could, shotgun ready but useless against the creature that followed. Xander trailed her by half a step, separating from her side only to swing around a gnarled tree. It's thumping footsteps placed it only a few long strides behind them. The tree they'd passed only seconds before was smashed into half-frozen splinters, the beast leading out a shrill screech of what felt like either frustrated rage.

“Ada!” Xander yelled for the fourth time. “Ada, get over here, God damnit!”

There was something ahead. A clearing. Well, sort of. It was a causeway build some thirty feet down, probably so that the train tracks they'd been following could keep going, over and undisturbed. She'd seen it once, when she was a mercenary for a short while, not long before her cage fighting career.

“We’re runnin’ out of distance, boss!”

“I see it! Go right after the next tree!”

She broke right and charged away from the noise. It seemed to work. Cait rounded another tree before swinging her 12ga to her shoulder. She saw why it had worked and felt something leap inside of her chest. Xander was still running straight for the man-made gorge. The monster was on his heels: huge, grey, plated with armor and armed with knives and teeth and horns.

A deathclaw.

Xander dove left far too close to a sudden drop, but the creature was quick with its reflexes. It dug a claw into the earth and stopped it from running right over the edge of the deep causeway. As Xander scrambled to his feet, the 'claw lunged with a hand just to carve snow and frostbitten dirt from the ground. He started running, again, but not nearly as fast as before.

“Ada!” Xander's voice echoed. “Ada!”

_Vrrrm-BRRRRRRRRM._

A red beam snapped out from a thick grouping of trees and right into the deathclaw’s side where the armor over its ribs started to turn off-white. Another shriek rolled through the dense forest. The beam had actually sheared away the thick plating, putting a partially charred messy gash. It started to spill blood quickly from where the skin didn't cauterize.

The deathclaw snapped its head toward the assaultron as it rushed out from the trees melee weapons at the ready. Her face plates popped open again, glowing red as it did so, determined to deal another blow on the massive animal.

_Vrrrm-BRRRR—_

The deathclaw ducked to the side and backhanded the robot. Ada's turquoise body smashed into a tree and took it down with her. The 'claw didn't even slow down. It was already thumping after Xander, who'd disappeared into the trees. Cait hissed a curse to herself. She couldn't just stand there, doing nothing. The woman picked up her boots and charged passed the remains of the robot, after Xander and the deathclaw.

What if Xander is dead? The thought was unbidden, sudden, and jarring. A sickening feeling wash over her, throwing her off-balance for a moment. Cait couldn't understand for the life of her why she would feel so sick at the thought. It conjured up a fear that she refused to confront. She just needed to run, find Xander, and keep him safe. He looked like he was going to collapse when she saw him running back the way they came.

 _Btatatatat!_ announced Wincing Words. Xander was close by. Cait found the two of them—Xander and the Creature—locked in combat. The man dove to the side, rolling from his shoulder and onto his feet, blind-firing his assault rifle as ran. Its ugly little body kicked wildly in her boss's strong hands, spitting 5.56mm rounds and tracers without care. The deathclaw was done, either too tired or in too much to keep running. It wasn’t about to let him go, either.

With a throaty, chest-rumbling roar, it flung its arm out and swatted Xander off of this feet. He was thrown onto his back hands empty. Mincing Words was cast far out of reach. Even with a fist-sized hole in its side, the creature was too fast to be real. In a blur, the deathclaw was on top of him, It pinned him to the snow with one hand, the other high. She watched the already butcher knife-long claws _schklickt_ like a cat, its hand with machetes on its fingertips.

“Xander!” she cried out, helplessness weighing her boots down so that she couldn't move.

_PEWFF. P-PEWFF. PEWPEWFF._

The space between Xander and the ‘claw’s open maw burst in blinding flashes. That strange gun was in her boss’s hand, making small and brilliant stars that lasted only a fraction of a second. It was enough to halt the deathclaw in its tracks, as if surprised and unsure of itself. As the sounds died away, that thundering noise rolling through the forest, the moment began to stagnate.

The monster tipped over and into the snow, still as stone.

“Xander!” Cait scrambled toward the hulk of flesh-made-arm. She need to see if Xander was alive. No, more than alive—he needed to be ok. She didn't have the time to wonder why.

She rounded the deathclaw’s head and found the snow steaming with dark blood. “Xand—!”

“I’m alive,” he croaked. “I’m alive. Get this fucking arm off of me.”

Xander was laying on his back, that weird gun in his hand. The deathclaw's hand cupped half of his torso while its arm was draped over his chest. The long fore and middle fingers pinned Xander's other arm to the ground between them while the last two kept the whole hand anchored in the snow. The beast's side was still gushing blood as its bodied realized it was dead, the pressure slowly dropping. When Cait looked over the 'claw's face, she found huge holes buried in its left eye, it's sloped and plated forehead, two in its nose, and a fifth that had blasted a hole in the animal's teeth.

"Fer Jaysus sake," Cait gasped. She hadn't known her breath was hitched in her throat. Her heart was still hammering under her breast, as if she'd been running the whole time, not watching her boss nearly die.

The Irish woman had to work harder than she thought to remove the deathclaw's be-daggered fingers from the earth, and then its arm. Dead weight. But, once the claws were free of the dirt, Xander was able to push the arm off of him. When he stood, Cait saw how filthy he was. The man was covered in dealthclaw blood and matter. He was a right mess.

“Ya gonna get yerself dead doin' solo shite loike that, ya eedjit.”

“Aw, Cait,” he gave a winded chuckled, “were you worried about me?”

“Don’t butterup yerself,” she replied, perhaps a little too haughtily; she was just glad her face was already beet red from the cold and huffin’ and puffin’. “Ya’ve got me caps. Iffin’ ya die, Oi’m out av steady work.”

Xander chuckled, a sound that Cait was relieved she could hear, again. “Come'on. Let's go collect Ada. We need to report back. I need a shower.”

As they left in search of the swatted robot, she recalled the alien sensation she'd had for Xander. Fear. Icy, wretch-inducing fear that he would die. She couldn't understand for the life of her why she would feel that way. Why it had affected her so terribly when facing her employer's impending demise. She'd fought for her money for so long, she knew what losing out on a paycheck felt like. This wasn't like that at all. The thought made her blood chill. Cait felt she might rather cut herself to pieces than ever experience it. But, _why?_

Baron met up with them just as they found Ada, having hidden from the deathclaw on command of his master, overjoyed that Xander was alive. Cait didn’t want to admit she was nearly halfway as happy as the dog for the same reason.

* * *

“Xander, I’m so relieved that you are alright. I was worried that that creature had killed you.”

“I… How…are you even still functioning?” Xander gaped.

Cait couldn’t see how, either. “Ah’ll be damned,” she whistled.

Ada was buried in two trees, a severed leg sunk into the trunk next to the one her body was imbedded in. The machine’s foot pointed straight out with its hip-ball joint reaching for the tree's center. Her left arm was mangled while the right was missing. Her head was crumpled beyond operational capacity. The breastplate was flattened by the deathclaw's backhand. Her most of her large packs had ripped scattered around the impact zone. She'd been carrying a lot. Even Cait was impressed with how the robot survived such a blow.

“This assaultron chassis you gave me is far more durable than my previous body. The concussive shielding you put around my computing hardware also helped protect me from total destruction. I am, however, unable to move. It seems my legs are not responding to my diagnostic check.”

“Uh. How’re your optics?”

“I am afraid I cannot see, either. I’m beginning to fear that I may have been rather badly damaged.”

Xander sighed. “I need to send you back to Sanctuary. Sturges is going to have his work cut out for him. You’re... It's pretty bad, Ada. I’m going to have to strap you to Jez's chassis. If we can find her.”

“She was unable to follow because of her size. She weighed the amount of ammunition needed to cut a path to follow and reasoned that she would run out of her stores before doing so. She elected to stay behind."

Xander groaned. "Of course. Come on. Let’s get you packed up.”

* * *

It wasn’t hard to find Jezebel. They only had to follow the chittering of her weapons. She was chasing down molerats that had made the mistake to come out of their hiding holes.

Cait helped Xander secure Ada and whatever pieces of her they could find.

As the two of them rolled away—Jezebel shouting passive aggressive nonsense at Xander the whole way—Cait felt dread creep upon her. She and Xander were going to have to take care of themselves, now. Take care of one another. She'd gotten used to have a pair of machines watching their backs, keeping the raiders and the animals at bay. With Cait’s confusion circling around Xander, she wondered if she’d be ok. She wanted to run.

Badly.

* * *

“Jesus,” Cortez’s grating voice rolled out.

“Yeah. Looks like by the time we'd gotten there, a deathclaw had moved in and taken care of the yaoguai. I think that it had been tracking them, drove them out of their hibernation. There were scratches on its arms and legs consistent with yaoguai claws.”

“Well, how about I give you two-hundred caps and call it even?”

“Fer all'a  _that?_ ” Cait balked. “Xander almost _snuffed_ it. His assaultron’s feckin’ peeled and th’damn sentry-brain bastard had t’take ‘er back t’Sanctuary. We’re down two fightin’ machines, nigh. Y’better do more‘an _two-hundred feckin’ caps_.”

Xander bristled. “Cait–”

“No,” Cortez interrupted. The woman chewed her leathery lip as she thought. The Minuteman officer looked like she might be constipated, though Cait always had a trouble reading ghouls’ expressions.  “She's right. I'm not good with gauging bounties and shit like that. Lieutenant-Colonel Kranski would have known what to do in this situation, but he...died a week or so ago. That deathclaw would have been a real nightmare if it'd come to the Station. Would have killed a lot of good people. I'll have the paymaster give you a thousand caps each. Thank you for your work.”

Cortez pulled out a piece of paper and started writing. When she was finished, she bared her brown teeth in what Cait guessed was a smile and she handed them a piece of paper. The words on it looked like chicken scratch, but she could clearly see the 1000C on it. This was far more than Cait expected, but she wasn’t about to fight Cortez on the number.

“Here’s the requisition order. The paymaster should still be in his office. Xander, if you need to clean up, you can use my quarters down that hall. You look like hell. And, again: thank you. I really appreciate what you’ve done for Oberland Station.”

With the slip, Xander and Cait cashed out more money than she made in a month at the Combat Zone.

* * *

The Railed Station was a pub close to the brewery. It was choked with Minutemen and traders and drifters, but Cait didn’t feel nearly as claustrophobic as when they entered Oberland Station. Maybe it was the scent of beer and liquor that made her feel at home, no matter how crowded a place was.

The walls were covered in bits and pieces of the past, guns that were left behind by people that were important to the Minutemen. Knick knacks that made the bare walls alive with character. Someone looked to have gotten paintings from surrounding ruins and thrown them on the walls. Behind the bar, an assortment of pretty liquor bottles glittered with a majesty that Cait felt comfortable with. They were given such a lovely sight by the lights that hung above them. The tables were small, even in the booths that the owners had built against the walls, but the patrons were happy to stand if they didn’t have the opportunity to sit.

Cait shouldn’t have been surprised when a group of the blueberry brigade got up for the “General,” Xander, when they noticed him enter. It was nice to have a table all to themselves. Despite the noise, Baron crawled underneath the table and promptly passed out leaning on his side, uncaring of the protective plating making laying down particularly difficult. As Cait got settled in her seat, Xander mumbled something about getting the first round, and the woman told him what she wanted.

Something dark.

When he came back, surprisingly quick despite the men and women surrounding the bar, with actual pint glasses that were frosty. The Railed Station was making the most of the frigid beginning of the winter season. But, Xander’s face was about as frosty as the glass he set in front of his employee. He was like that since they left the ghoul’s office.

“W’at’s wrong, nigh?” she groaned.

“Your conduct in front of Cortez.” He leveled a mean look on Cait, narrow and burning with irritation. “Demanding more money than what she was offering. What was that? That was entirely out of line.”

Cait found herself prickling quickly against Xander’s mood.

“Don’t ya start on me, ya pompous shite,” she hissed, leaning in toward Xander with her teeth on edge. “Ya said we were mercenaries, but ya didn’t even ask for a fee. Not even wan cap. Nigh, yer friend over at th’Tin Can Cop’s office said yuh’d make sure Oi wasn’t wantin’ fer nothin’. Oi don’t know w’at McCready meant to ya, but Oi’m gonna take over his job an’ make certain we get paid properly.”

Xander opened his mouth to promptly close it. He wanted to fight back, and Cait was expecting him to, but he didn’t. After a moment, he ran a heavy hand over his face and let out a heavy sight. He was tired, now. Not annoyed as he had been a few moments ago. Cait’s own annoyance slowly faded, unsure if she should let her armor down just yet. He might surge forward again and bite her head off for something else that was just a bullshit excuse to shout and be angry.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Cait narrowed her eyes, more. “W’at?”

“You’re right. I did say we were mercenaries. Now that I have you to think of, I really should be more considerate of what you should get paid. I’m sorry that I wasn’t making sure you were being take care of.”

She watched him for a long while, eyes suspicious as she put the cold beer to her lips and took in a large gulp. When she put it down, she tried to analyse his face and understand his meaning properly. People didn’t give up this easily, especially with her. Up until Tommy, people mistook Cait for being nothing but a pair of fists and nice tits, just because she couldn’t read very well—and they could. That was their mistake. She’d get into arguments with her bosses about how things should be done or unbalanced pay, and the shouting would continue for hours. It probably surprised them (men, all of her bosses) that a woman like Cait could figure things out quickly when she was getting stiffed or the bad end of a stick.

But, that tired face he gave her, eyes no longer stormy with ill will, put Cait off balance.

“Ya not gonna argue th’point?” she probed.

“No.” He ran a hand over his face, again, and took in his own beer. “Why?”

“It’s just that, whaen Oi come back with somethin’ loike befare, Oi’d get nothin’ but lip. But, ya just backed down, loike Oi was roight. Not wan bitin’ werd nor haughty look. Jus’...ya were done.”

Xander watched her, this time, eyebrow cocked and split lips working. “I told you that you were under my employ. I failed to take into account that you needed payment for sticking your neck out for me. You should be paid, especially with what happened today. So, you were right. And, I’m sorry for making you have to remind me of that.”

“Ya’re fierce quare, Xander.” _In more ways than wan._

He chuckled and took in another long draw from his glass. “Yeah, well, I’ve been called worse.”

Cait made a sudden “ _ha!_ ” sound, pointing right into her boss’ face. He jerked back, eyes wide and hands up, defensively.

“It’s not jus’ that, boss. It’s not jus’ yer way of dealin’ business,” she said, still pointing at him with that strong finger. “Ah’ve not foun’ many ah man who can folly me tongue, an’ even then Oi had t’change me lingo t’make sure that Oi could be understud. ‘Ow do ya understan’ anythin’ Oi say?”

After a long pause, Xander let out a surprised laugh and came back toward the table. Cait let him have the space, enjoying the beer. And the change of atmosphere, not that she wanted to admit it.

“My mother was an Irish immigrant. She was from Cork, so we spent a lot of time there or in Kilkenny and Limerick seeing my grandparents and cousins. My Nan and Pa were pretty well-spoken, but my cousins communicated in nothing but the slang. I had to learn it if I wanted to run around Kilkenny with them. I can actually understand gaeilge, but I can’t speak it. I could try, but my grandparents would just look at me strangely and laugh.”

“Gaeilge?” Cait repeated, thinking. “Don’t t’ink thar’s anyone who spakes it, anymore. Thar’ weren’t whaen Oi wus still in Wexford.”

Xander nodded. “I’m not surprised. It was a dying language when in the 2060s. My grandparents were bilingual, trying to keep it alive. But, after the bombs dropped, I don’t think anyone would have cared to keep it alive.”

“W’at did it soun’ loike?”

Her boss gave her a screwed look, full of confusion and amusement. “Uh. Well. Uhm. I can try. It’s not going to sound anything close, though.”

“Out wit’ it,” Cait demanded.

The man gathered his thoughts and lined them up. He had to work his mouth a few times before he was confident enough in the positioning to begin. “ _N-ní féidir liom...a bh-bhfuil Gaeilge a-agat._ ”

Cait took in the words and its flitty, smooth sounds, even with his minor stuttering. It was her history, pieces of Ireland she never knew she wanted to hear. It was beautiful.

“W’at did ya say?”

“‘I don’t speak Gaeilge.’”

Cait blinked, then laughed. “Didn’t expect somethin’ so noice t’mean somethin’ so borin’.”

Xander let out a soft chuckle. She couldn’t hear it over the others laughing and shouting around them. “I always wanted to seriously learn Gaeilge. I was going to go to school to University College Cork, probably settle down there. I don’t know if my G.I. Bill would have covered it, though. The inflation-rate was insane around the end. I still wanted to live there. But...it didn’t work out, did it?”

A silence settled between them.

Cait felt uncomfortable, again. This man had so many points in his life that made him quasi-bipolar. If she said or did the wrong thing, he’d either bite her head off or do...this. Whatever it was. His eyes settled in on his bear, those lips of his slipping into a soft, absent frown. She didn’t want to have this happen, again. Cait coughed, hoping to snag some attention away from Xander’s decline.

“‘Ey. Xander. Where’re Cork an’ Kilkenny?”

The man picked up his eyes, looking at nothing in particular as he thought. “Uh… Cork is…was north of Kinsale and west of Wexford, where the coast made a sharp corner. Kilkenny was just west of Dublin.”

Cait had to dig into her hazy memory of Ireland, trying to recall the areas that Xander was giving her. She worked her lips, trying to follow the coast until the answers sprung to mind. “Oh. Oh, shite. You mean Colr and Killcenn. Colr isn’t even on th’map, anymore. Felled into th’sea not cock an’ ten years ago. Killcenn’s ah rayder township, nigh.”

Xander’s eyes dimmed and his frown deepened. “Oh.”

That was the last they spoke for the next four rounds, Cait cursing herself for her insensitivity as each minute passed by. She didn’t even notice that she normally wouldn’t have cared. What was another person’s happiness to her? Nothing, usually. It provided no edge, no leverage that she could hold over them. But, that night at the Railed Station, Cait couldn’t help but feel guilt for bringing up tender memories for him. This new sensation made her heart sink along with Cait's once-steadfast self-understanding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone interested in how I envisioned the new pronunciation for Cork and Kilkenny, here:
> 
> Colr, _Koh_ -leh-r(rolled)
> 
> Killcenn, Kil- _kehn_


	4. Draw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ho-ly shiiiiit. I am so sorry. I've been so fucked up, mentally & physically, that it was a real chore to pump this out. But, I got there, god damnit. I got there and I hope its presentable. As with the last chapter, I need you folks to give me a shout out if anyone is out of character or...whatever.
> 
> After...like, three or four months, enjoy.
> 
> I hope.

Two months.

No raider packs. No unusual sightings. No leads.

Nothing.

The Sun Caravan investigation was growing cold along with the winter. Snow storms were becoming more frequent, and the likelihood of stumbling across any clues plummeted with the temperature. No one had seen or heard of a caravan raid that could leave a scene like the one Xander described. It didn’t help that with the new depths in the cold Xander had to leave Baron in Piper and Nat’s care. Without his nose, the two of them would be that much farther into the deep end.

The longer the investigation drew on, the shorter their funds became, Cait faster than Xander. Whenever she got a chance, she would top off her jet stash in case there would be a time that she would be without money, again. Then, she’d pay for her hotel stays as the Boston nights dipped into dangerous temperatures. There was also the frequent late-night pints-and-liquor binging Cait and Xander “enjoyed.”

To pay for the investigation, the “Commonwealth Misfits” took on odd jobs to eat and sleep comfortably. Much to Cait’s chagrin.

She hated that they helped every little person who grew the balls to ask Xander for one thing or another. After their chat in Oberland, though, Xander was sure to charge for their services. But these services were less on the violent spectrum than Cait hungered for. It made her bristle every time they did something menial, like finding someone lost in the snow or trying to get someone some part from somewhere so they could build something. Pay was…decent. Going rate was usually fifty caps, and if there was unexpected shooting involved, Xander tacked on another twenty. They could eat and drink and keep looking for the Sun Company caravan.

There was something to be said about Xander as a drinking companion. He told some wild stories when he was in his better moods, so wild in fact that Cait had to work her ass off to keep her air of disinterest that put people off. Kept them at a distance.

There was annoying little notion that needled her when she listened to his stories or his jokes, a nudging prickle that suggested that she should enjoy what was happening. _Av course_ , she’d tell herself, _Oi’m enjoyin’ it roight swell, aren’t Oi? Oi’m laughin’._ But that was never what the imp in her mind meant, and no matter how much Cait tried to ignore the deeper connotation, the woman knew what it was. It was scary, knowing that deeper meaning. It something she’d never truly known, despite wanting to have known it since a child. Cait was afraid that, should she ever experience it, it would be snatched away from her without recourse. Because the world was cruel. And so were the people who lived in it. Still, it didn’t change the fact that she was…

No.

Cait wasn’t ready to admit that. Thank that. But, she could admit that she was…enjoying herself.

* * *

“Cait.”

_Bangbangbang._

“Wake up, Cait. We have to roll out.”

“ _Ugh…_ ” she groaned. She opened her eyes and feltas if the world were trying to kill her. “W’at toime issit?”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

Cait made a louder groan and dragged herself out of bed. Every muscle in her body ached. Marching through the snow was getting to be a massive pain. She wondered if there’d be a way to get one of those atomic cars working, again. Right and proper. She slipped her feet into her unlaced boots to shuffle to the door. With a hard yank, she pulled the door to her hotel room open and tipped against the doorframe.

She was far closer to Xander than she realized she could be.

His dark eyes peered into her’s, alert and with a purpose. A scent tickled her senses that made it easier to entertain his excitement so early in the morning; it was _Xander’s_ scent, she realized with startling clarity. Cordite entwined with the dusty smell of his His personal scent that she had enjoyed for far longer than she realized she had. His big shape dominated the doorframe, and despite what it had meant in the past, it was a familiarity that Cait couldn’t help but enjoy it. There was a sense of safety that she couldn’t properly place in that overshadowing size. Xander’s breath still smelt of the whiskey they shared the night before, sending shivers down Cait’s spine.

She covered her mouth and coughed, stepping back. Gave him some space. Her some space.

Cait didn’t understand herself. This wasn’t like her at all.

“W’at toime is sit?” she finally repeated.

“It’s four in the morning.”

“W’at! We just waent t’bed not three hours ago!”

“I know, I know. But, it’ll be worth it.”

Cait yawned, still doing her best to shake off the veil of sleep despite having given such a surprise a moment ago. “Whoi’ve we gotta go so early?”

“Traders were talking about some kind of firefight past the Poseidon Energy plant to the south of Quincey. Non-raider by the sound of it. A lot of laser rifles and something else. The traders could only describe it as a weird light show.”

He gave her a curious look until Xander dropped his gaze. There was a sudden light blush and he turned away. 

Cait dropped her eyes and felt a flush spill across her own cheeks. She was wearing her underwear and an old, loose-necked t-shirt that she’d bought a month before to sleep in. The article rested on her breasts as to allow her cold-hardened nipples to push through the fabric. She’d been naked in front of so many people, fucked so many of them that she had thought she’d lost all sense of what “decency” was supposed to be. But, here, in front of Xander, it was different. Everything was different, and it scared her beyond measure. More than any creature in the wastes or man behind a gun could frighten her. She spun around and bore her back to his.

“Get dressed,” he said after a moment. “We’ve got to leave in fifteen minutes.”

* * *

“ _What?_ ” Xander blinked.

“ _W’at?_ ” Cait said in tandem with her boss.

The grizzly woman behind the bar didn’t bat an eye. “You heard me. Twenty caps a piece.”

Cait looked at Xander, who then looked back at her. He was shocked and dismayed, just as she was.

“I’ve only got twenty-two caps. We’re going to need some of this for food and water. How much do you have?” Xander asked.

Cait didn’t want to tell him. She felt embarrassed and angry, though she wasn’t sure at who. The woman knew exactly where her caps had been going, too, but that wasn’t something Cait had decided to share with her employer. Not that he needed to know that. No…only how much money she had. “Oi… Oi’ve got eight tins.”

Xander didn’t look as if the number was off. Just hopeless.

“Is there anything you can do?” he asked after a moment, turning his eyes back to the barwoman. “We’ve been moving since dawn. From Egret.”

“Ain’t my problem,” she huffed.

“We can’t stay outside tonight, the temperature is dropping like crazy.”

“Ain’t my problem, neither.”

Cait felt her upper lip crawl up her teeth into a sneer. She nearly bit out with a tirade, filled with hate and spittle, when the woman’s shoulders shifted into a slump.

“Look,” the woman said in an acidic sigh, leaning over the bar. “Let me make you a suggestion. Not only because you guys look like you’re in a bind but because I’m about to get off and I’m tired of dealing with idiots like you: _Bunk up._ ”

Cait’s temper flared and she wanted to strike the bar woman in her already broken nose.

But, the barkeep looked like she could break Cait in two with her big arms.

“We’ll take it,” Xander said, exasperated.

What else could they do?

“Welcome to the Jamaica Plains Inn,” the barwoman replied, turning around and plucking a key from the wall behind her. She handed it over to Cait with a smile that made the redhead want to blow her face off. “We hope you fuck off in the morning.”

* * *

The beers were still cold despite just how long the new, night-shift woman at the bar had taken to get them. She appreciated the good flirty barwoman, but if Cait had to put up with her clumsy attempts at “pub seduction” any longer, Cait would have had to split the woman’s head in two. But, she was free, now, and only a few steps from her and Xander’s room.

She rapped on the door with the back of her knuckles. “Oy. Xander. Oi’m comin’ in. Ya better be decent.”

That annoying little flit at the edge of Cait’s mind wished that he wasn’t. She brushed it away as she came in.

The room was small, dominated by a big double-bed and furnished only by a small table and two chairs. Their gear was placed “neatly” on the floor along the wall next to the door. The curtain leading to the washroom was pulled closed, Xander humming to himself with a radio that played from somewhere deeper in the building. 

That little flit in her head made it down to her stomach.

“‘Ave got th’beers,” Cait announced.

“Alright. I’ll be out in a second. The water’s still hot if you want to get cleaned up.”

“Cheers,” she replied absently, moving a little closer to the curtain. She felt like a teenager, again, driven by a keen want to see what she had not. To see what she had not been given an opportunity to see. There was a gap in the curtain that drew her closer, the running water calling to her like a flame to a moth. He hadn’t noticed her lurking, even as Cait caught a glimpse of Xander through the part in the curtain.

The woman’s mouth dropped open. She surprised herself. She, a woman who was surprised by little, found a form that she had yet to see in all of her years.

Xander was bare (nearly), his left side facing her. He was drying off his face with a towel that rested along his front. It reached all the way down... No. She couldn’t rush this. Not when she’d been blessed with an opportunity to gawk at a body that lived up to and beyond expectation.

His hair spilled over his broad shoulders, finally out of that messy Ronin. It was wet and dark, even in the pale light flickering periodically overhead from dying bulbs on a shitty electrical circuit. As Xander pulled the towel over his fully-grown beard of red and white and black-brown, that full hair of his—peppered heavily with premature grey strands—made him look like a warrior of some forgotten time. Perhaps even from stories of Gaelic swordsmen that faceless person told her deep in the murky recesses of her mind. 

Xander’s muscled shoulders framed his thick, corded neck, which drew her eyes down and over his sculpted chest. That shitty light exposed bullet marks on each rounded pect, stab wounds and more small-arms fire scars dotting his chiseled stomach. Like her’s. The powerful arm she could see bore more of the same, but still her eyes greedily took in the sight.

Cait watched Xander’s hands closely as he continued drying his front. There was a cut over the man’s hips she’d never seen that drew her eyes down to...to his...

That fucking towel stopped right over where it mattered. The towel almost hid him, teasing her eyes with an outline that only dared her to reach out and yank down. She had had her choice of men in the past and Xander looked as if he would be one to actually test her. Cait could feel her fingers twitching as that impulse caressed her more human desires. The ones she had taunted herself with since meeting Xander Sorbowski, since she’d accepted that her boss was handsome as fuck all.

Xander’s bottle slipped from Cait’s fingers and thumped against the plywood floor.

“ _Shite–!_ ” she hissed, looking down to grab the beer before it rolled somewhere.

_Pweeeee…_

Cait’s eyes snapped up to find herself staring down the gaping barrel of Xander’s strange revolver. His eyes were hard and murderous. The well-oiled locomotion of a trained killer. Xander’s breath was slow and steady. Cait knew she was a hair’s breadth from death. His eyes opened, soft. “Cait?”

She nodded.

His revolver dropped to his side.

She let slip a hitched breath. “Feck me, Xander, it’s loike ya were expectin’ a tussle–”

Cait found her boss’ right side to be a distracting thing, sudden and jarring. From his shoulder, down his arm and over his hip, to the man’s knee, the skin was marred by a massive network of scars. It was a web of bubble-gum pink tissue, oddly scrawled over his flesh in patterns that she couldn’t recognize. There wasn’t any way to understand it, she realized.

“Burns,” she muttered, a chill washing over her.

His eyes hardened, again, a frown set deep into that handsome face. She didn’t like the way the scar that split his lips looked when he was mad. Or pensive. Xander reached up and yanked the curtain closed. “Yeah.”

Cait felt strange. That desire she’d had only a moment before was still there, under her breast. Cait knew that the burns should have disgusted her (they reminded her of the ghoulies that made her skin crawl), but her want of him didn’t fade. The woman’s only other sensation was...pity.

No. Not pity. Cait felt something deeper, something genuine for Xander, and it left her speechless. Weighted. Rooted to the floor where she had gone from peeping to gawking. It took some time for her to bend her knee and retrieve the beer she’d dropped. Will herself away from the curtain and wait without a sound for Xander to return from the washing room. She sat at the table that overlooked the main street through Jamaica Plains, nursing her bottle that she’d gotten for herself. Xander’s beer sat opposite of her, in front of the open seat that was waiting for him.

When Xander finally appeared, dressed with his sleeves pulled down and around his wrists, she tried to think of something to say. The pink scorching over his knuckles and down to his fingernails distracted her. He’d never let her see that right arm and hand before, had he? “Uh...those weren’t somethin’ ya mentioned whaen we met. Th’burns, Oi mean.”

“Yeah.”

“How’d ya get’em?” Her voice wasn’t nearly as confident as it was that first night four weeks ago.

Xander didn’t reply.

With his scarred fingers, Xander gingerly grasped the bottle’s neck and slid it from his side of the table to her’s. “I don’t want it.”

The man walked over to his side of the bed, using his sleeping bag as a sheet.

Somehow, Cait didn’t want the second bottle.

* * *

_Ptsssssssss._

She took in a sharp breath, lips wrapped around her inhaler. The heavy flow of biting mist crawled over Cait’s tongue and down her throat. Her body started to relax as it touched her, from her mouth, around her scalp, and down her spine. That tense pain in her shoulders disappeared and so did that jittery feeling she got in her heart and hands when she was coming off of her high. As it spread down into her toes, the world around her started to slow. The time dilation. It came with a flood of pleasure that prickled her skin all over, like when she actually came during sex. Or, when she just had sex. Cait usually didn’t think much when the jet hit at first, but she was acutely aware of how much larger this lungful was than usual.

Whatever the reason, Cait didn’t care enough to probe her findings any further than that.

Xander still hadn’t noticed her intake. Perhaps she was the first addict to have graced the man’s presence. Her boss seemed entirely oblivious to her mood changes. Probably wrapped up in himself again, but that knowledge elicited no deeper reaction like it usually did. That snide irritation that slid over Cait’s eyes when she remembered Xander was some self-hating loon. She was just curious as to what he was thinking.

Her eyes drifted down Xander’s back, the armor he wore bouncing slowly up and down with each stride. His pack and bedroll did the same. But, she caught something she’d only found herself watching every so often.

The man’s round, majestic ass. Cait only really watched him when she was like this. Trailing her boss as her hit set in. It called to her, the slowed passage of time creating a spectacle that lasted for an eternity. She had loved the way it looked before, but knowing just how nice the part of him looked without any clothes on made Xander’s rear that much more attractive. She knew she wanted to see it, again, without clothes. She wanted to see him without clothes, without that towel to make viewing all of him that much more difficult. Cait could feel her body adjusting and heating with the thought of it.

Maybe she should try pushing herself on him? Cait had thought she’d seen him staring at her ass while they walked from place to place. If the Irish woman was right, she would get to see all of him.

_Th’scars, too._

She remembered, with startling clarity, why she’d taken this big hit in the first place. It was that feeling she couldn’t shake from the night before. The one that made her feel shame for having peeped in on Xander in the first place. Or, maybe it was because of his reaction, cold and stoney, that put her off balance. She had believed in their two months, the pair of them had started building a rapport that could stave off the most wild of Xander’s mood swings (which he had plenty of). Still, something from the night before nagged on her consciousness in a manner most uncomfortable. Was it because he had closed up so quickly? Or, was it because she felt as if Xander had closed the gates again on what seemed like a partnership that could breed a harmonious ( _working_ ) relationship.

The buzz normally didn’t dip so soon. Maybe It was her mood.

Cait just wanted to be happy, again. Like, when the Jet was enough to settle her nerves and make the world seem bearable.

_This is jus’ an aff day_ , she told herself, shaking her head.

She’d be right as rain when the hit started to mellow.

* * *

The vertibird was nothing but bones, broken and stripped, when Xander and Cait arrived.

A haze of white settled over the machine’s gravesite in South Quincy, filtering the sun into a dull circle in the sky. The snowy vail blotted out everything around them. Isolated them. The only thing Cait could see was the looming shadow of the overpass soaring into the sky and beyond their reach. No trees dotted the landscape or filled the horizon. No other features suggested clues to where they really were.

The haggard wing of the vertibird seeped into view, reaching into the sky with curled back rotor blades. The plating that should have hidden the inner workings were gone, leaving bare the strangely absent guts of tubing, pipes, and wire-cables. As more of the prewar machine bled into sight, the less there was. The fuselage was picked apart by scavengers, the weapons gone as well as the skin. What could be wrenched out of the machine’s body was. Whatever was left was ignored. Someone even dismantled the nuclear engine.

Xander found signs of fighting. Wherever Cait kicked snow aside, she found glassing and the dark stains of days-old blood. There were no casings. No evidence of kinetic-fire weapons. There were a few grenade craters that Xander found, but beyond that?

There were no clues to be found, here.

They were too late.

* * *

The power armor was nearly intact. It was a Brotherhood soldier, the body and suit having rolled into a ditch during the fighting. There were dents and scuffed points where small arms fire had marred its image, but they were old compared to some of the laser scarring that had defaced its dull-chrome skin. The spots where the metal had melted and swirled were not really anything Cait’d ever seen before. The killing blow had been to the soldier’s head. What remained was half-melted so that she could see the iced-over gore inside; some of the helmet’s metal had fused with the person’s skin and bones and brains. At any rate, the rest of the suite still hummed with power.

“Plasma,” Xander grunted.

Cait turned a look over her shoulder. “‘Ow can ya tell from all th’way back there?”

The man stayed a good distance from the machine, as if wary that it might come alive and attack him.

“The melting-patterns on the chest and helmet. Lasers can do serious heat damage, but it’s point-focused. Plasma deals a larger damage radius, sprays the target with pressurized superheated plasma and you get a melting pattern like that. That’s why half of that man’s head is missing.”

“It looks loike it still werks. No sense in lettin’ it jus’ sit ‘ere.” She clambered over the hulking body, looking to see where she could steady herself in the ditch. “We can tern it over an’ get th’body out. Sell it ‘r use it.”

A silence passed that caught Cait’s attention. She looked up and found Xander unmoved, a glare painted across his face. She balked.

“Don’t tell me ya’ve actually got a thing against lootin’ the dead,” she groaned. “Ya told me that we’d be splittin’ anyt’ing we found on th’dead, roight? So don’t start wit’ yer bollacks iffin’ yer actually some knight in tarnished armor.”

Xander didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until then she realized he wasn’t glaring at her so much as glaring at the armor. She looked down, trying to find something that was off or wrong that would be life threatening, but it all looked like power armor to her. She didn’t know the internal workings of a machine let alone any sort of superficial signs that could point to a sudden and violent death by malfunction.

“W’at? W’at’s wrong? Is it gonna explode?”

“No.”

She looked back up, brow bunched and eyes narrowed. “Thaen w’ats th’problem?”

“...I’m not going near that thing.”

Cait worked her mouth trying to understand. His eyes were getting wild, lips crushed together in a flat line. His entire body was stiff, rigid. Xander took a half-step backward, cautious.

“W’at th’feck’er ya on about?”

“We’re heading back to Jamaica Plains.”

“ _W’at?_ ” Cait climbed up onto the suit’s chest so she could see Xander clearer. “Ya can’t jus’ _leave_ this piece. It’s werth a pretty cap!”

“If you want it so bad, then walk it back yourself,” Xander snapped. “I don’t want it.”

“Yuh bloody well know that Oi can’t werk wan’a these contraptions. An’ yer the wan who’s been gabbin’ on about how ya were in th’Army.” She placed her hands on her hips, sizing Xander up on his strange attitude. “W’at’s got yer panties all in’na knot?”

The man’s eyes and nose flared before he turned and started marching through the snow, back toward Jamaica Plains.

“Get back ‘ere, ya feckin’ twat!” Cait scrambled down into the snowy ditch and back onto the main road. She had to get onto her boot’s toes to catch up to him. When she grabbed him by the arm, she found herself on her back.

In only a heartbeat, Xander’s big hands had dislodged Cait’s steel grip from his jacket. Her body, with all of her gear, was yanked forward as if weightless. Xander had put his foot out to trip her, make her lose her footing so she spun into her fall. Her pack kept her body propped up and her head from slamming into the snowy pavement, but she wasn’t sure if that was a blessing. Before her world could stop spinning, Xander was on top of her, that strange forward-angled blade pressed uncomfortable to her throat. Its edge bit into her flesh near where an old scar from another knife had left its mark, just under her jawline.

Cait was back, there. She was in that dark shack in Killcenn with that asshole who pinned her down with his own knife. Hand working her rags up from her hips.

_No! Not there. Oi’m not there, anymore._

She was right. Cait wasn’t in Killcenn, underneath that fat, filthy disgusting ball of a slaver. She was under Xander in the Quincy snow, a man who didn’t want anything from her.

Because he didn’t recognize her.

The look in his eyes was terrifying. Wild. Teeth set and bared as if he were an animal. He didn’t know her, right then. The weeks that they’d spent together had vanished and all he could see was danger. Adrenaline surged through him to serve this man’s primary goal:

Survival.

“X-Xander?” she breathed, laying still under the edge of the knife.

And just like that, it was gone. Whatever he had seen or thought she was disappeared. Cait was Cait, again.

Xander scrabbled off of the woman, the blade disappearing into the snow in his panic. “O-oh, my god. Oh, shit. I’m sorry, shitshit, I’m sorry, Cait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–”

He turned over onto his hands and knees and started to wretch in heavy, sickening sounds. All of the contents of his stomach spilled out and into the snow, blasting a hard cloud of stink into the air. It took some time after he finished vomiting to stop the gagging. Cait could only watch, still immobilized by her own trauma unable to help him. Once he stopped, he sat back on his calves and heels, sobbing. Sputtering. Apologizing.

Xander had gotten into sour moods, and he’d gotten into dark ones.

But, he had yet to do something like this.

Despite everything that Cait had told herself not to, coached herself so that she wouldn’t be hurt by anyone, the woman felt suddenly connected to Xander. She had her shit together the best she could. The Irish woman had Jet and booze and fighting. She could even pull herself out of her own moments of blind terror, something she hadn’t been able to do until the Combat Zone.

Something was seriously wrong with Xander Malcolm Sorbowski. Cait felt as if she’d known it since coming under Xander’s employ, but now it was an unavoidable truth. Her heart ached.

* * *

It took Xander a while to calm down. Surprisingly long, especially to stop dry heaving. He could do nothing else but cry and apologize when he wasn’t.

Once he could stand, Xander wordlessly helped Cait remove the Brotherhood corpse and chuck the slagged helmet. Together, they pulled the suit out of the ditch and stood it on its feet. For the next hour, Xander showed Cait how to walk under the promise that he wouldn’t have to pilot it, himself. She learned quickly, much to her surprise.

Xander wasn’t, though he wouldn’t explain why.

When Cait was ready, they left the vertibird corpse where it was and headed north. Instead of Jamaica Plains, the two mercenaries headed for the Atom Cats’ garage. Cait knew Xander didn’t want to talk, so she didn’t push him. To be honest, neither did she.


End file.
